Neutral Evil

This past weekend (prior to my Alamo Drafthouse experience), I went to see the new remake of Evil Dead. The original is a cult classic that I have seen, but hold no particular affection for; whether or not the new movie was going to be faithful to the original was not a consideration for me. I was just looking for a good horror movie. I got only part of one.

The middle act of the film is pretty solid. The crisis is in full swing. People are possessed, bad things are going down, and the film is striking an effectively creepy tone. The movie even manages to recycle a few moments from the original, and present them more effectively. (For example, even a fan of the original would acknowledge the campiness of the "raped by stop-motion plants" sequence in that film; the remake does manage to make that same idea fairly traumatic without being quite so silly.)

The problem, though, is that the bread in this sandwich is a lot of character stupidity. In order to jump start the story (and to lead it to an "exciting" conclusion), the characters have to behave in a large number of unbelievably dumb ways to manufacture jeopardy. Not just "dumb for people who should know they're in a horror movie" things, but just dumb things in general that no realistic person would do.

Another problem is that this remake, no matter how hard it's trying to strike a more dramatic tone, is arriving in a world that now has The Cabin in the Woods. That brilliant movie is a loving send-up of horror clichés, and there's no one movie it hits as hard as Evil Dead. And I think that's rendered it impossible to take the premise seriously anymore.

Some of the acting is good, particularly Jane Levy's dual performance as the recovering addict Mia and the demonically possessed Mia. The gore is very well realized, and there are a couple of fun departures from the plot of the original. But generally, this is just another average horror movie. I give it a C+.