MAY #5: Evil Dead (2013)

              

              Psstt, kid! Hey, kid! Yeah, you. Want to see something your parents will really hate? Want to see limbs ripped off, little bits of cartilage and gristle hanging out? Want to see human bodies endure more pain and lose more blood than you thought physically possible? Want to see blood on blood on blood on blood that makes the Italian maestros look modest. Then boy do I have the film for you!

              It’s 2013, the last gasp of remake fever. Gritty, grimdark, torture-porn inspired flicks are on their way out, to be replaced by demonic possession, spooky dolls, and the meticulous mise-en-scene of prestige indie horror. The Conjuring and The Purge launch their respective franchises. Cabin in the Woods, which deconstructed the slasher once and for fucking all, is one year old. Little Sara hits the movie theater and tries to convince her boyfriend to see Mama because she heard Guillermo Del Toro produced it, and she wants to be scared, but her wimpy boyfriend makes them go see zom-rom-com Warm Bodies instead. Sara will never forgive him.

              Onto the scene arrives Evil Dead, the very epitome of ‘00s horror. We’re talking relentless self-seriousness, we’re talking tight close-ups on grievous bodily injuries, we’re talking self-mutilation, we’re talking enough blood to feed a family of vampires for a year. Oh boy, it’s all here, except for the tank tops and the heavy metal soundtrack that I’m told featured so prominently in this very special moment in horror history. Um, have I mentioned I know jackshit about this subgenre? 2012 was also the year I graduated from a great big wimpo to a horror nut thanks in no small part to Cabin in the Woods, and also the year I realized my mom would get me and my friends into R rated movies by serving as adult accompaniment, and by then the mighty subgenre was all but caput. I went straight to renting prestige horror on Netflix and cut my teeth on The Babadook.

              All this is to say, Evil Dead is a slice of the kind of gory, ~extreme~ horror that dominated the subgenre when I was timmedly roaming through Blockbuster shelves, and the kind of horror that I swiftly yeeted away from as soon as there was any available alternative through which I could still get my spooky kicks. But of all the remakes from remake fever, this is the one that horror fans tout as Actually a Good Movie. So I gave it a try and I….liked it? I think.

Okay, poster, I wouldn't go that far

              It has the advantage of not being a straight remake, thank god, because no one can Bruce Campbell like Bruce Campbell. And just like last night’s viewing had an unlikely final girl, this version of Evil Dead gives the spot to its Cheryl stand-in. Cheryl always had big final girl energy – super alert, artsy, the odd one out – but instead was the first to get possessed and meet a nasty end. But this film asks the question, what if Cheryl wasn’t beyond hope when she went all demon-facey? What if she was actually the main character all along? So new character Mia takes the place of Cheryl. Our group of youths head up to the cabin so Mia can detox from her drug addiction (guys, is this really the best way to go about this?) and you can guess what happens next.

              I liked Mia a lot but the rest of the cast is a mixed bag. Her brother David is sweet but bland. Friend and licensed nurse Olivia is both sympathetic and aggravating in her insistence on keeping the flakey Mia at the cabin so she won’t give up on her plan to get sober, but for the only other character with a personality, she’s offed way too soon. David’s girlfriend Natalie is a complete nothing-burger, quiet until she gets a bad case of demon arm, and Eric, well, I’m worried about this dude. In the original, the kids just have to listen to a tape recording of a guy reading from the Necronomicon, and lo a low effort haunting is upon them. Here, the Necronomicon is wrapped in a garbage bag and tied up with barbed wire, so Eric has to clip the barbed wire, flip through a buncha pages that say stop what you’re fucking doing bozo and don’t even think about reading the magic words, resourcefully make etching of the magic words which are faintly impressed on the pages, and then, solemnly, read them out loud. It is so much effort! To no end! Eric is not, like, a demonologist, he’s just a guy with Father John Misty hair and hipster glasses. I’ve never scene such bozo behavior in a horror movie, a genre infamous for such behavior. The rest of the squad makes only marginally better decisions, though props for David for coming up with a cunning plan to save his sister.

              This all only makes sense if it’s in the Cabin in the Woods universe, come to think of it.

              Maybe just leave this book alone, huh?

           It’s possession and the occult day, and if I wanted proof that Evil Dead is about possession not zombies (which I do), I could hardly do better. What this film does best is take the emotional oomph of the possession plotlines in the original and turn them up to eleven. The opening is a great little horror short film (even if it begs the question, who are these Welsh speaking hillbillies with deep knowledge of the occult??) of a dad killing his possessed daughter. It packs a wallop and asks, what if little Regan MacNeil just straight-up killed people instead of spinning her head around like a sideshow act. Meanwhile, the mythology of this film is, shall we say, odd, but brings it much more in line with your typical possession story. The Book of the Dead refers to a singular He, not the plural Us of “join us!” Big Satan vibes, unlike the vaguely Mesopotamian demon squad of the original. The possessed spend a lot of time mutilating themselves, because Saw, but also maybe because little Regan once masturbated with a crucifix. And then there’s some nonsense with eating five souls (which, aggressively, does not occur, since we have a survivor) and summoning the Abomination and a rain of blood which, while it does not make a lick of sense, did sing to my twelve-year-old self. A hand burst up from the dirt, just like the poster from the original! Look at that demon doppelganger! Chainsaws! Blood! Hot damn! It was my favorite part of the movie by far.

              It seems remiss to compare this poor little hunk of flesh to The Evil Dead, one of the single greatest horror movies of all time. I can tell you that this movie doesn’t do demon face or demon voice or sound design or demon cam as well as its predecessor, but no movie ever has. I can tell you I wish the demons talked more, and cracked jokes, and were assholes rather than hurling Exorcistian obscenities, but goodness its 2013 and grimdark is in and if I want jokes I should check out The Hangover or something. No movie with a budget can ever feel as secret, as dirty as the original did. The original snuck into my psyche and stayed there. It felt like something I wasn’t supposed to see, like a message from beyond. Sam Raimi did things with a dime and prayer than no mortal should be able to do. If a shiny studio film can’t achieve that impact, then, duh. Let’s face it, this isn’t an Evil Dead story, it’s a dumb little time capsule to a gnarlier and more innocent time. Maybe it’s my teenage movie-going shoulda-beens, but it makes me all gooey inside, like an especially cute baby. Bless its filthy little soul.

 

Really makes you think, what is a soul...

Vibecheck: A needle in the eye. Well, not right in the eye, just right under the eye, listen we’re not French (or Korean or Japanese or Italian or)

Scare Factor: I was gonna say more gross than scary but then I felt woozy at dinner and didn’t want to go downstairs in the dark so you know what, movie, I’ll let you have this one

Pairs Well With: Have I mentioned a little movie called Cabin in the Woods. Or if you check this one out and say this is nice Sara but can I have even more blood somehow, then maybe you’d like to try Inside.

But how gay is it?: Hello, it’s the year 2013 and we’re going to say the word “bitch” 215 times in a ninety minute movie. Eli Roth is the big man on campus. Do you even have to ask.

Girlfriend’s Corner: This sort of poorly-lit Zak Snyder-adjacent bullshit was most of the horror that came to the theater near me when I was a kid, and thus it’s what I assumed all horror was until well into college. I missed out on so many fun experiences because of the false idea movies like this gave of a rich, important genre of filmmaking! I rate this Poor.