Movie Review: Evil Dead (2013)

Image from here.

Evil Dead is a remake of a 1981 horror film of the same name. I, unfortunately, do not remember if I actually watched the original, but as a kid, I remember loving the third movie in the original series, Army of Darkness.

I watched this with my family last night after a delicious S&R dinner, despite it not being very Mother's Day-ish. My mom loves horror flicks anyway, so it was a bit more apt than it would seem.

Shocking and gruesome would be my best way to describe this movie. The plot is quite lame, as is with old 80's cult horror, but the movie was well-made. I read that they chose to stray away from the usual CGI special effects and draw from the older kind to make the illusions seem more realistic. This was evident and you wouldn't notice any computer-generated crap (*cough* I am Legend *cough*). The movie feels like a roller coaster that constantly tries to make you cover your eyes by terrorizing you with worse and worse images, but at the same time, I strangely found it difficult to look away.

That said, there is one big difference between this movie and those of old, and that is the awesome character that is Ash Williams. He was funny. He was bad-ass. He carried a shotgun and had a chainsaw for a hand. Not that I wanted them to ruin his memory by casting someone else to play the role, but I was hoping there was a character who was at least slightly as cool. There is no such character in this movie.

Ashley J. Williams

Verdict: 3/5 - Worth the watch, but don't expect anything more than that. Could be a good precursor to remakes of the next films, hopefully with more bad-assery next time around.

We made the mistake of not staying on after credits, do wait for it if you're watching! Check out the trailer below for a better look at the film.

Loved Evil Dead? Hated it? Let me know by commenting below, or just tweet me!