Starring Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, Elizabeth Blackmore, Phoenix Connolly, Jim McLarty, Sian Davis
Directed by Fede Alvarez
Expectations: I don’t know. High but also low.
As a die-hard fan of the original films:
Realistically:
The 2013 version of Evil Dead is everything I feared it would be. Instead of encapsulating that rebel, low-budget spirit of the original, it feels incredibly mainstream and not the least bit fresh. I suppose that’s to be expected of a mainstream remake of a genre classic, but I had hopes that with Robert Tapert, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell on-board as producers they’d make sure that they did justice to the legacy of Evil Dead.
What makes Evil Dead a hard one for me to write about is that I can see both sides of the argument. Purists think this should never exist (like most remakes), but modern viewers unwilling to venture into low-budget territory have come to this one in droves. I’m firmly in the purist camp, but I do think they got one thing perfect. This Evil Dead isn’t so much a remake of the original as it is a similar situation with entirely new characters and a lot of cherry-picked elements and shots from the Raimi films. This is definitely the way to go to avoid people like myself bitching about how “the new Ash isn’t as good as Bruce Campbell,” and other such unwinnable arguments. So now there’s no Ash at all. Which is exactly how this movie should be. Ash and Bruce Campbell are inseparable.