We’ve all heard the story before. There’s a cabin in the woods, off the beaten path. It’s alone and isolated – the perfect place for some kids looking to get away from it all. Little do they know that something dark and hideous is lurking in those woods.
It’s not just because this is a remake of Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” that we know this story. It’s the basis for more scary campfire stories and ’80s horror movies than you can shake a sharpened, gore drenched stick at. As horror plots go, it’s somewhere up there with “it was a dark and stormy night.” It’s not for nothing that the original “Evil Dead” picked that particular cliché to build its story around. There is little quite as entertaining as the familiar doing what you expect exactly as you expect it. Raimi and company back in the 1980s counted on that fact to make their first feature financially successful (a film’s primary goal after all). Raimi and company in 2013 are still counting on that fact.
That said, director Fede Alvarez’s new “Evil Dead” is not a recreation of or homage to the original. Beyond the basic plot and the return of a few of the most well-known sight gags from the first two “Evil Dead” films, it is generally its own animal.
Yes, it’s still a group of 20-somethings holed up in a cabin in the woods. Rather than looking for a party, young David (Shiloh Fernandez) and a group of friends he hasn’t seen in quite some time have gathered together to help his sister Mia (Jane Levy) kick drugs cold turkey, even if it means being locked up in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
Which is a good start as far as it goes. Unfortunately, it’s as far off the beaten track as anyone is willing to get, and it’s not long before the script by Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues (with an uncredited polish by Oscar winner Diablo Cody) starts heading back to very safe genre waters.
You can read the full review over on ShockTillYouDrop.com
