Even now I'm still having flashbacks.
Evil Dead (2013).
Dir: Fede Alvarez.
Cast: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas and Elizabeth Blackmore.
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| "I will feast on your soul!" "Feast on this motherfucker!" |
Poor old Mia (Levy from the US version of Shameless, which is apt) has a problem with 'the drugs' so her best buddies; Eric, Olivia, Mia's brother David and his girlfriend Natalie, sick of her crashing out in the corner at parties stinking of piss and eggs have decided to take her to an old cabin deep in the Tennessee (well, New Zealand) woods in order to get her clean.
Unfortunately things begin to go wrong from the moment they arrive, Mia (channelling Nights of Terror) starts to complains about the stench of death coming from a kitchen cloth whilst David's dog (the four legged kind not Natalie) during a bout of rug sniffing, comes across a cellar hatchway hidden under a carpet.
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| "Does it come on a Kindle?" |
Deciding to investigate, our troubled teens are fairly surprised to discover not only a collection of animal corpses hanging from the ceiling, a double-barrelled shotgun and lying unloved on a table and wrapped in a bin bag a really shoddy fan made copy of the Necronomicon.
You can tell it's not the original for a variety of reasons not least being the fact that not only do the illustrations look like they were hastily scribbled by a 14 year old virginal heavy metal fan but that it also has handy English translations in the margins.
Oh yes and DO NOT READ scrawled across the cover in big letters.
This doesn't seem to put off the lank haired bespectacled Eric (Pucci from, fuck it do you really care?) tho' seeing as he decides to start reading passages from it aloud causing all many of strange camera angles and lighting effects.
Oh yes, and a she-demon (in reality Levy blacked up like a minstrel) to pop out the bushes and scare Mia, who's minding her own business sitting on the car from the original movies which just happens to be parked outside.
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| "Shite oot mah mooth you demonic bastards!" |
Terrified (or embarrassed it's hard to tell) Mia pleads the group to let her leave saying that she really needs a poo but can't do it in an outside toilet but the group refuse, determined as they are to make her kick her 'habit'.
At this point I could understand how she felt.
With a wiggle of her peachy junk filled arse Mia grabs the car keys and stroppily drives away in the car (no-one bothered to hide the keys) but before she can make it any further than the top of the road the Al Jolson demon pops up out of nowhere causing Mia to crash.
As you would in these situations our drugged up dame legs it into the woods only to be attacked by the trees and have a slimy shit coloured tendril go up her Jemima Puddleduck.
Ouch.
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| And definitely don't fucking watch it. |
The group after, ooh, minutes of searching find Mia lying in the woods covered in shit and stinking of piss (kinda appropriate for this movie) and take her back to the cabin where she attempts to warn David about the monster in the woods but the rest of the group think she's talking absolute shite in a vain attempt to escape back to her crack-addled world of drugs.
Which quite frankly is where I'd love to be right now.
If you think that's bad then imagine David's reaction when he finds that not only is his sister a total pain in the arse but that someone has bludgeoned his dog to death with a steel dildo.
Well, actually with a hammer but you have to agree my version would have been better.
Anyway in all this dog based death drama Mia manages to lock herself in the bathroom where she proceeds to scald herself in the shower for some reason or other.
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| "Boiled onions!"...a cellar based beast yesterday, |
Finally deciding to do something proactive, David attempts to drive his by now slightly crispy sister to a hospital, but a flood has blocked the only road out.
What?
Didn't the budget stretch to a Lego bridge?
Back at the cabin, any attempt to sedate Mia seems to send her more and more loopy culminating in her turning up in the living room armed with a shotgun.
Unfortunately rather than shoot the entire cast dead and them herself she only manages to slightly graze David's shoulder before collapsing to the floor and vomiting over Olivia (Cloverfield's Lucas).
Realizing that they're in a remake and that the movie is at the halfway point, David kicks Mia into the cellar and chains it shut giving the director a chance to give us a cellar based creep out even more terrifying than the original.
Unfortunately he manages to fuck that plan up by replacing the lo-fi frights of a paper mache covered Ellen Sandweiss with a visibly embarrassed Jane Levy doing her best amateur hour Exorcist impression whilst forced to shout the clumsily constructed "I'll feast on your soul!"
Bless.
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| ...And how it should be done. |
Cue forty odd minutes of soulless slashings, paper thin homages to the beloved original, inconsistent lighting and a complete lack of understanding as to what made Raimi's original so damn good.
For fucks sake Sam, you can't be that skint.
Where does one start when it comes to the Evil Dead redux?
I'll admit that I was a wee bit sceptical when it was announced but was soon won over by Sam and Bruce's hard sell shmuck, which was a bit like a couple of long lost friends offering to take you out for the night to revisit your favourite pub from your younger days.
Sad thing is that when you get there they've knocked it down and built a carpark.
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| "Hey buddy! Wanna buy a franchise? Only one previous owner!" |
Whilst the young things (and a few older people who should know better) seem to have been bewitched by the all glam and glitz approach to the remake, with it's promise of no CGI and unrated bloodletting they all appear to have forgotten what made the original so bloody brilliant in the first place.
What the original lacked in budget it more than made up for in sheer unrelenting terror, the perfect haunted house movie made (puckered and twisted) flesh from a pre-digital age when only those young film makers with the perseverance and talent could hope to make their mark on a jaded industry.
And then usually by having to pawn the parents house.
Sure the characters in the original are cliches but at least they're interesting cliches, the remake throws us the five most, whiny, self obsessed and boring teens since Dawson's Creek.
In the original you were rooting for Ash, Scottie, Linda, Cheryl and Shelly, this time round you're just praying that the cabin explodes taking the entire harsh faced, moaning cast with it.
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| Alvarez, this is your fault. |
I could go on but what's the point?
No talent, no mercy, no point....like watching your wife, high on crack sell your first born into child sex slavery.
I actually pulled a nail off in anger during it.
Fede Alvarez your turn is coming.
That is all.
*Except to say that giving your characters the initials D, E, M, O and N isn't big or clever, it's just shite.
