The Evil Dead (2013)

You may all thank me; I have gone to see “The Evil Dead” so that you don’t have to.

But first, my Hollywood Crap assessment:

A movie poster was up for “The Lone Ranger”. Before you go walking too far down the thought-path of Hollywood possibly having made a watchable movie, you should know that the role of Tonto will be played by Johnny Depp. Who will be wearing a dead bird on his head. I feel that this movie may safely be added to the ever-growing pile of cinematic feces which I will never see.

Along that line, trailers were shown for two other movies, “You’re Next” and “Carrie”, which clearly demonstrate that Hollywood has still not managed to find a single creative writer, but that they have moved into full Christian-attacking mode. *gag*

As for the feature, well, the title was warning. But I decided to give it a try because, well, the original “The Evil Dead” sucked. It was a college film project, and I don’t know anyone who thought it was a great movie. The power of the Evil Dead series lies in the later movies–“The Evil Dead 2” and “Army of Darkness”. The title was a warning because “2” wasn’t a sequel, but a re-make; someone who really appreciated the franchise would have called this movie “The Evil Dead 3”–or better, have made “Army of Darkness 2”.

Instead, they re-created the original without any of the things that made the later movies successful. There was no camp or dark humor in this movie; just bad acting and an over-reliance on violence and gore. Gone was the implied horror; instead of having someone dragged into the darkness and leaving the viewer to imagine what was making those awful noises, every moment of every attack is shown in disgusting detail.

But the worst is that the mythology has changed. The Evil Dead series has always centered around the Necronomicon, placing it, however inexpertly, in the realm of the Cthulhu Mythos (this has been one of its biggest appeals to me). This new movie, however, has “the Evil Book”, which is quite clearly Satanic in nature (and I think as much homage is played to the cinematic adaptation of “The Exorcist” in this movie, as is paid to the original “The Evil Dead”).

This is a lazy, unintelligent “re-make” (of a re-make). I can’t recommend it to anyone.