Evil Dead 4
The upsurge of bad remakes of once great horror movies (and franchises) in our so called modern era of filmmaking has been as rancid as it is laughable with only the revived Texas Chainsaw series having any real kind of traction in the long run while other efforts like Nightmare On Elm Street and Fright Night would literally disintegrate by the wayside. So, when Rob Tapert had suggested to co producers Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell to sign off on a remake / reboot of their 1982 masterwork The Evil Dead (presumably for the big creative rights payday it would entail), Raimi was enthusiastic about the idea whereas Campbell was reportedly reluctant, apparently concerned about passing off the torch of his iconic character Ash to a younger actor, but a compromise would be reached and rightfully so since the original trilogy was literally one classic after another all of which was anchored magnificently by Campbellās legendary hero who was really just an extension of Campbellās own laconic personality, that of a wisecracking asshole whom nonetheless would still come through to defeat demonic forces on an unholy scale and it seemed to most people that anything concerning this franchise MUST involve him. As a result, it was made clear that this 2013 release was indeed part of the original continuity and Ash himself would actually make a sort of nothing cameo appearance at the very end in order to set up a literal TV series āsequelā where Ash would return full time and completely in his element. But first, this installment had to be made for better or worse which saw the producers hire in a new writer / director in Fede Alvarez, a guy whose understanding of English was so limited that his finished screenplay had to be fully rewritten by Diablo (Juno) Cody so that it would come across to audiences as being more āAmericanizedā. A remarkable irony since for no good reason the decision was made to film in New Zealand, strange enough as it was since all one would need to have is a workable log cabin location with the original being filmed in a remote spot in the woods of North Carolina, a place that has earned some notoriety amongst fans not only for being particularly hard to find, but also for reportedly being a creepy / possibly haunted place to try and spend the night in. Fortunately for Campbell fans, the five main characters are all original ones, albeit with the same gender ratio (3 girls, 2 guys) and their alleged motive here being that one of the girls is supposedly a hopeless drug addict (which really would make her only too easy prey for the Deadite demons) who is being brought out there for some kind of āspecial treatmentā by her brother, his girlfriend and the other girl who is apparently some kind of a ānurseā who is not only running this rehab show but seems to believe that isolating the patient in the middle of nowhere is a surefire way to successfully treat substance abuse cases. The cabin itself (owned by the unlucky and ill fated Professor Knowby in the original) is said to be owned by the family of the two siblings, but that doesnāt do much to explain the bizarre prologue featuring a captured teenage girl completely possessed by The Deadites who is tied up and burnt to a crisp by an equally frightening group of ritualistic cultists (including her own father) in order to āfree her soulā which all takes place within the confines of that same cabinās basement prior to the arrival of the main characters which at least confirms that A) there is a group out there (which Ash is not a part of) actively hunting down Deadites and B) the same group is drawing their tactics from the infamous Necronomicon (Book Of The Dead) which was such a predominant part of the earlier films. But none of it is ever followed up afterwards and so when we get to the arrival of the main group, the junkie girlās brother is told privately by the others that they do NOT expect this specialized treatment to work and all throughout the qualifications of the so called nurse girl to even be enacting such methods is never called into question. Of course, it isnāt long before the junkie sister starts acting out and worse, the discovery is made in the basement of the remnants of the opening sceneās āexecutionā including the unexplained bodies of several dead cats (were the demon hunters into animal sacrifices too??) and so instead of smartly turning tail and getting the hell out of there, the decision is made to continue with the hardway drug rehab treatment while the nurse girlās extra nerdy boyfriend digs out the Book Of The Dead and wastes little time reciting passages from it guaranteed to bring about a resurrection of the previous filmsā creatures. Soon the junkie sister begins to REALLY act out and becomes more than just merely agitated, a state that the nurse girl chalks up to being a psychotic reaction to her withdrawal and then finally the shit starts to really hit the fan. The problem with all of this is partly the super serious tone that this film takes on as while the original Evil Dead was pretty grim and nihilistic in its own right (before Campbell found his footing as Ash and made him into the coolest of heroes), it also contained a breakneck pace and a real sense of fun in portraying its horrific events as if to say that the audience is meant to be in on the joke so that they can enjoy it even more whereas this newer film has neither of those qualities. In addition, a concerted effort seemed to be made to use natural lighting in order to keep things as dark as possible which might have been an effort to make the jump scares more effective, but which results in a more claustrophobic effect instead. Funny enough, the movie seems content to not only lift dialogue and whole scenes from the original trilogy but also from The Exorcist as well, particularly in portraying the possession of the junkie sister who seems to be borrowing equally from both Linda Blair and the actresses from the original film. The most perplexing thing here though was that even with the TV show starring Campbell about to start up production, this film serves merely as a sidebar and not as any kind of an origin story for the surviving main character to possibly team up with Ash (given that Ash appears to have a small group of sidekicks on the show) later on, a conceit thatās even more hard to understand considering that the surviving main character A) endures an extended period of demon Deadite possession in order to successfully return to being themselves again as Ash had done in Evil Dead 2 (and of which his ability to do so possibly marked him as āThe Chosen Oneā in Army Of Darkness), B) through that same manifestation manages to spawn an evil dopperganger twin of themselves which has to be defeated in kind (as Ash did with Evil Ash) and C) manages in the course of the final battle to be forced to amputate their own hand in order to survive which of course was another one of Ashās shining moments. However, a decision was made (for the time being) to keep Ashās new TV show separate from this entry which for more reasons than one makes this pretty pointless and poorly done, showing us just how much Sam Raimi had been on the right track in casting personal friends in the key roles and not pretty Hollywood actors while maintaining a dirty, gritty feel to the proceedings instead of the glossy, overproduced shenanigans which we get here in unfortunate abundanceā¦
5/10