The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
[Evil Dead Thread] Come Get Some (Spoilers).
Atomika
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
So it's come to this.
Today sees the release of the remake/reimagining/requel/redundance of the 1981 low-budget horror cult classic, The Evil Dead, though this time shortened of article adjectives to merely Evil Dead, syntactical issues notwithstanding. I don't think I need to refresh anyone here of the original and it's quasi-sequel that kinda-sorta remakes the first film; they are requisite texts for genre geek credit. They also starred this handsome fellow:
Well, we scraped the bottom of the barrel long ago with horror, so here we are to sift through the splinters and make particle board out of what's left of the last remaining sacred cows.
AR's Big Damn Review: Evil Dead
A goddamn travesty.
This movie is a goddamned travesty. It's like director Fede Alvarez watched Cabin in the Woods and said, "I liked everything about this movie until the kids realized it was all being faked. Let's just do the parts where they act like cheesy stereotypes mindlessly recycling horror movie tropes." This was one of the longest 90 minute films I've ever sat through. Painful. Ugh. Where to begin?
Let's start with the worst fault: the terrible, terrible, fucking terrible script. It is a script that features five characters who first meet at Ye Olde Abandoned Cabin. What I would like to remark upon here is that the cabin itself gets more backstory than any of the characters, although it's a unnecessarily lame backstory; it was owned by the mother of the two main characters before she went crazy and died in an insane asylum. Because people who live in the real world own dilapidated spookhouses hundreds of miles into nowhere accessible only by dirt roads and fording rivers, right? Oh, and at some point the cabin was home to a satanic cult that burned a demon to the stake inside the house without burning it down somehow. The timeline doesn't exactly match up on this, because logistically the demon barbeque had to occur during the time the mother owned the house, since all the bricabrac indicative of said roast (including the Necronomicon) are found there when the kids return. How this can be, I have no idea. I'm pretty sure the movie has no idea. This is also where the movie first tries to failingly establish the rules of the Necronomicon; I'll give you the Cliff Notes -- the rules are Whatever The Fuck Needs To Happen Next.
The film makes it's central mistake here w/r/t the Necronomicon and the Deadites. Instead of the familiar "faceless monster flying through the woods in a POV shot," the film frequently reveals that monster to be a dead girl. That's it. That's the big reveal. And it happens at about 13 minutes into the movie. What is her motivation? Why does she want to kill anyone? What is her deal, anyway? This is not the kind of movie in the business of answering those questions. It just hopes that you remember how many other movies use scary dead girls you've already seen and just do all the heavy lifting yourself. The constant presence of supernatural foreboding that permeated the original films is almost completely absent here.
Next, we get our heroine (who I'll get to in a bit) and the four most bland actors in the history of bland acting. They've each won multiple Blandies at the Academy Awards of Bland Motion Pictures. The script hobbles them from the beginning; instead of establishing their relationships prior to throwing them all in the cabin together, we just get them all in one ugly wad. There's Concerned Minority Friend, The Most Unlikable Nerd Ever Made, Blonde Day-Player, and Fake Ash from Abercrombie. We're told they've all gathered out here in the middle of Murder Hollow to help Our Heroine kick Her Heroin Habit. Because that's how you kick a chemically binding opiate: you go out miles from a hospital and surround yourself by people you barely know. How did Fake Ash even talk his girlfriend, Day-Player, into coming? "Hey, babe, you want to meet my sister? I'm going to spend the weekend in a remote cabin with her while we watch her go insane from heroin withdrawal. I'll pack a picnic!" The original film made those relationships obvious by making it about two couples and showing them acting like it; the five people here are disparate and their relationships are never divulged beyond "*friends*, which is interesting in its own right since at least three of those people are the most banal and unfriendly sadsacks I've seen outside of a Noah Baumbach movie.
Every character is the most bland and obnoxious version of their individual stereotype. They're so stereotypical that it's almost racist against other horror movies. The script has no interest in developing them outside of what the plot calls for them to do immediately in the moment. Why does Unlikable Nerd open and read the Necronomicon? And how does he so quickly become a fucking scholar about it? Remember in Evil Dead II where the Necronomicon was even enigmatic to the actual Necronomicon scholars? Remake Necronomicon was written by IKEA, apparently.
The heroine here is the only moderate compelling character, which must mean she's an amazing actress. The script here calls for every character to say the most brainless and obvious shit all the time, and no one ever seems like a real human being. But the heroine is forced to spend most of the movie trapped in a cellar, possessed. She doesn't return to form until the end when she is unpossessed by rules-lawyering, only to fight the Deadite girl again despite a huge logic flaw in her return anyway.
The cinematography is unpleasant and trite, copying every horror movie of the last decade's look of washed-out sepia tones and close-up jittercam. The effects are ugly and cheap, and that's when they're not shitty digital effects. When they are, they're extra shitty. Honest to god, there's a scene in the film where Fake Ash follows a neon-pink digital blood trail on the ground during a torrential rainstorm. It's the perfect microcosm of how this movie gave so few fucks about quality or logic. And while gore is indeed everywhere, you're so early on detached from the story and characters that it never matters and eventually just becomes tedious and numbing.
There are numerous callbacks to the original films, but they always feel like pointless shoehorns. "Hey, remember the cellar! Remember the chainsaw! Remember the river flooding the road! Remember when people's hands got cut off? Remember burying people alive? Remember when the lightning hit the tree?" It's all so cack-handed it's the Highlander 2 of the Evil Dead series; it vaguely remembers what the original was about, but it doesn't really give a fuck about it or you.
Let me put it this way. It's a movie that features a literal rainstorm of blood, and I can't remember the last time I was this bored with a film.
Today sees the release of the remake/reimagining/requel/redundance of the 1981 low-budget horror cult classic, The Evil Dead, though this time shortened of article adjectives to merely Evil Dead, syntactical issues notwithstanding. I don't think I need to refresh anyone here of the original and it's quasi-sequel that kinda-sorta remakes the first film; they are requisite texts for genre geek credit. They also starred this handsome fellow:
Well, we scraped the bottom of the barrel long ago with horror, so here we are to sift through the splinters and make particle board out of what's left of the last remaining sacred cows.
AR's Big Damn Review: Evil Dead
A goddamn travesty.
This movie is a goddamned travesty. It's like director Fede Alvarez watched Cabin in the Woods and said, "I liked everything about this movie until the kids realized it was all being faked. Let's just do the parts where they act like cheesy stereotypes mindlessly recycling horror movie tropes." This was one of the longest 90 minute films I've ever sat through. Painful. Ugh. Where to begin?
Let's start with the worst fault: the terrible, terrible, fucking terrible script. It is a script that features five characters who first meet at Ye Olde Abandoned Cabin. What I would like to remark upon here is that the cabin itself gets more backstory than any of the characters, although it's a unnecessarily lame backstory; it was owned by the mother of the two main characters before she went crazy and died in an insane asylum. Because people who live in the real world own dilapidated spookhouses hundreds of miles into nowhere accessible only by dirt roads and fording rivers, right? Oh, and at some point the cabin was home to a satanic cult that burned a demon to the stake inside the house without burning it down somehow. The timeline doesn't exactly match up on this, because logistically the demon barbeque had to occur during the time the mother owned the house, since all the bricabrac indicative of said roast (including the Necronomicon) are found there when the kids return. How this can be, I have no idea. I'm pretty sure the movie has no idea. This is also where the movie first tries to failingly establish the rules of the Necronomicon; I'll give you the Cliff Notes -- the rules are Whatever The Fuck Needs To Happen Next.
The film makes it's central mistake here w/r/t the Necronomicon and the Deadites. Instead of the familiar "faceless monster flying through the woods in a POV shot," the film frequently reveals that monster to be a dead girl. That's it. That's the big reveal. And it happens at about 13 minutes into the movie. What is her motivation? Why does she want to kill anyone? What is her deal, anyway? This is not the kind of movie in the business of answering those questions. It just hopes that you remember how many other movies use scary dead girls you've already seen and just do all the heavy lifting yourself. The constant presence of supernatural foreboding that permeated the original films is almost completely absent here.
Next, we get our heroine (who I'll get to in a bit) and the four most bland actors in the history of bland acting. They've each won multiple Blandies at the Academy Awards of Bland Motion Pictures. The script hobbles them from the beginning; instead of establishing their relationships prior to throwing them all in the cabin together, we just get them all in one ugly wad. There's Concerned Minority Friend, The Most Unlikable Nerd Ever Made, Blonde Day-Player, and Fake Ash from Abercrombie. We're told they've all gathered out here in the middle of Murder Hollow to help Our Heroine kick Her Heroin Habit. Because that's how you kick a chemically binding opiate: you go out miles from a hospital and surround yourself by people you barely know. How did Fake Ash even talk his girlfriend, Day-Player, into coming? "Hey, babe, you want to meet my sister? I'm going to spend the weekend in a remote cabin with her while we watch her go insane from heroin withdrawal. I'll pack a picnic!" The original film made those relationships obvious by making it about two couples and showing them acting like it; the five people here are disparate and their relationships are never divulged beyond "*friends*, which is interesting in its own right since at least three of those people are the most banal and unfriendly sadsacks I've seen outside of a Noah Baumbach movie.
Every character is the most bland and obnoxious version of their individual stereotype. They're so stereotypical that it's almost racist against other horror movies. The script has no interest in developing them outside of what the plot calls for them to do immediately in the moment. Why does Unlikable Nerd open and read the Necronomicon? And how does he so quickly become a fucking scholar about it? Remember in Evil Dead II where the Necronomicon was even enigmatic to the actual Necronomicon scholars? Remake Necronomicon was written by IKEA, apparently.
The heroine here is the only moderate compelling character, which must mean she's an amazing actress. The script here calls for every character to say the most brainless and obvious shit all the time, and no one ever seems like a real human being. But the heroine is forced to spend most of the movie trapped in a cellar, possessed. She doesn't return to form until the end when she is unpossessed by rules-lawyering, only to fight the Deadite girl again despite a huge logic flaw in her return anyway.
The cinematography is unpleasant and trite, copying every horror movie of the last decade's look of washed-out sepia tones and close-up jittercam. The effects are ugly and cheap, and that's when they're not shitty digital effects. When they are, they're extra shitty. Honest to god, there's a scene in the film where Fake Ash follows a neon-pink digital blood trail on the ground during a torrential rainstorm. It's the perfect microcosm of how this movie gave so few fucks about quality or logic. And while gore is indeed everywhere, you're so early on detached from the story and characters that it never matters and eventually just becomes tedious and numbing.
There are numerous callbacks to the original films, but they always feel like pointless shoehorns. "Hey, remember the cellar! Remember the chainsaw! Remember the river flooding the road! Remember when people's hands got cut off? Remember burying people alive? Remember when the lightning hit the tree?" It's all so cack-handed it's the Highlander 2 of the Evil Dead series; it vaguely remembers what the original was about, but it doesn't really give a fuck about it or you.
Let me put it this way. It's a movie that features a literal rainstorm of blood, and I can't remember the last time I was this bored with a film.
0
Posts
As promised, the Evil Dead review.
Short answer: It's pretty good
Longer answer: It's the reconstruction to Cabin the Wood's deconstruction
The movie contains all the elements of the genre that you might recognize, but it takes them and recombines them in a way that avoids the problematic cliches they usually accompany. Primarily, the plot doesn't revolve around stupidity. That isn't to say the characters don't make mistakes (spoiler alert: someone reads the book), but those mistakes arise from the character's personality and the scenes context rather than being stupid.
On the violence, it's brutal and gruesome. But it didn't revel in that, which I appreciated. Of course, after I say that I do have to point out that there's one scene where that isn't the case - except it's related to the catharsis so I think it didn't upset me.
On being a remake, it hit the main points of the series but didn't parrot or mock them. Yes, there's a chainsaw and a shotgun, but they're cleanly integrated rather than being thrown around with a wink and a nod. They even included a certain disturbing scene with some plants, but managed to do it with horror and less camp than the original.
Finally, the ending surprised me. In retrospect, all the elements were alluded to such that it is possible to accurately predict the ending. But the pacing of the movie did an excellent job of keeping me on my toes, preventing me from acclimating to the horror or stopping to think through the clues.
My only real complaint is that most of the cast doesn't get much characterization. The movie's running time is fairly short so it ends up relying on some shorthand to establish them. It works, but it's sparse.
And bring on Evil Dead 4.
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
PM Me if you add me!
Yes, one can do realistic gore and violence nowadays. But less is more.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I'm going to need some embellishment here, mostly because I have no idea what you mean.
He makes a really pointless cameo in the post-credits sequence. Like, super pointless.
Yeah that's not enough to make me see it.
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
PM Me if you add me!
I fear this will be a retread of our Prometheus discussion, but I'll give it a try. What I'm saying is that the actions may be questionable from the perspective of the genre-savvy audience, but logical from the perspective of the characters.
I doubt I'll be able to respond again tonight, so I'll start with just one example.
The stereotypical cause of the evil being summoned in these types of films is the characters being wild and reckless. Such as drunk kids reading the book on a dare.
Yet in Evil Dead, it's caused by a character, established as an "academic" (using the shorthand I admittedly complained about), exploring the book out of curiosity. And later, rather than being oblivious, he's smart enough to realize what he's done.
And, to be fair to you, I will agree that the script quality of the middle third or so was weaker than the beginning and ending.
The review in the OP is all sorts of wrong
After seeing the original Evil Dead for the first time this week (its free on Hulu right now) and watching the new Evil Dead this morning, I will say that the new one stuck to the spirit of the original, modernized it, and actually improved on a number of things.
Great horror movie.
It is absolutely not torture gore for the sake of torture gore
In fact, there is very little torture in the movie at all considering that most of the time the person getting jacked up is possessed and not themselves.
Calling the gore in Evil Dead torture gore is like calling the gore in Walking Dead torture gore.
Opinions, and all that.
It's currently trending as "rotten" on RT's top critics and has 58% on Metacritic. It's not exactly lighting the world on fire. Just to say, my opinion isn't exactly an outlier on this one.
What's funny is the it was running at 81% when I wrote my review.
Its probably plummeting so much because of the Sci-fi/Fantasy/Horror ghetto. I find that early reviews for such movies tend to be more useful as they include the enthusiasts who actively enjoy the genre.
(That isn't an accusation leveled at you, just an observation)
If it's just preaching to the choir, why bother with reviews at all?
Man, this seemed so much longer and in depth when I was typing it at my phone at a boring party.
I wanted to add some more on my comment on the script. In my opinion, the movie started very strong and did a spectacular job of avoiding the pitfalls of the genre. But what keeps the movie from being great (and instead merely good) is that it was undermined in just one or two spots:
Specifically, I found the ending where we were cheering on chainsawing the demon in half to be unfortunate. Now, as I mentioned in my review, I give it a partial pass for being catharsis. But at the same time, I think it undermined that presentation of the violence as terrible, unfortunate, and HORR(OR)ible.
Similarly, the girlfriend going down to check on Mia was questionable. Again, she had no idea of knowing evil Mia was faking, but it was just a little more than I would have liked to see.
TL;DR 95% of the movie was great, but it felt like a few parts of the script were written by someone else.
Ah, but my argument is that the latter group is also tainted!
And I'm sure you'll agree with me that Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror are looked down upon as genres, right? I can't say with any certainty how much that affects the score, but I'm confident in saying that it cost it at least a few points.
Also, as an interesting corollary, there's some enthusiasts who dislike the movie because it isn't campy and terrible enough. I read one review that called this a comedy
I wouldn't agree that legitimate critics looked down on genre film as a practice. We do live in an age where films like Avatar, LOTR, Star Wars, District 9, Inception, ET, and Black Swan are all Oscar nominees. Genre films are no more ghettoized than romcoms or sports movies; there a lot of shitty ones, and a handful of good ones. The only people who ghettoize genre films are those that knowingly make shitty entries and the people who forgive those films because of what section of Blockbuster they're found in.
At a film festival, Bruce and Sam Raimi said that they plan on doing two sequels to Army of Darkness to run concurrently with two sequels to the modern Evil Dead remake, and have both come to a loggerhead with a final film that combines the two.
So.
Keep living, at least for another decade, anyway.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
I did like:
The car from the originals being sat on by Mia at the beginning of the movie.
However the original movie was so fucking cool mainly because it was so campy and low-budget, and to that end extremely creepy. Not the case here.
2008, 2012, 2014 D&D "Rare With No Sauce" League Fantasy Football Champion!
That hasn't been my experience, but that's a better tangent for the Film Thread I suppose.
Yeah they better hurry. Campbell is no spring chicken now. So, I guess this is a parallel world thing? I would be fine with just the Army of Darkness sequel. Seems more manageable.
Ram and Bruce may be pipe dreaming, but they should have some FU money now.
Sort of like a halfway point between Army of Darkness and Bubba Ho-Tep.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Yes. The monsters feel more corrupted and deformed in the original series of films. It seems like this one has more of a realistic slant. I like the original style more, it added a surreal quality to it.
Really my only complaints are twofold: one, that the supporting cast is pretty one-dimensional, but honestly that applies to the vast majority of horror films anyway, and two, that I saw most of the 'money shots' in the trailers already. It bothered me enough that I've decided to take a 'one trailer per film' approach from now on - if something doesn't hook me in that first trailer I'm out.
Except that you should never trust a movie critic to review a horror movie. They are all nearly universally disliked by mainstream critics.
Again, this is bullshit. As I have already pointed out.
There are plenty of critically-acclaimed horror films. Don't ghettoize yourself. Don't ever say that something isn't for critics.
They often get panned for shock, violence, and gore when those things are basically the foundation of a horror movie.
Of course there are some bad horror movies and recently the rise of "torture porn" passing itself off as horror hasn't helped things. But even a series like "Paranormal Activity" gets lukewarm reviews and I would put forward that it's probably one of the best series of horror movies in at least a decade.
It sounds like you're arguing that horror movies should be judged by separate criteria from all other movies.
I don't agree to that.
Because that's how things get ghettoized.
Either of those movies should be reviewed in the context of their particular genre. Saying that the same criteria applies to any movie regardless of what it is, is intellectually dishonest and lazy.
I think I know what you're trying to say here, but this isn't the way to say it.
Certain criteria apply to all movies, regardless of their intent or origination.
I didn't dislike Evil Dead because it didn't aspire to be Lincoln, I disliked Evil Dead because it had thin characterizations, a half-assed plot, and it bored me to tears. All movies have to exceed those thresholds.
I'm sure people made those exact same arguments when the original came out.
For the record, I enjoyed it. Nothing will be as good as the original of something unless it's radically different (I'm looking at you Tomb Raider reboot) and if that happens the same people will be bitching that it's too different.
Plot holes? Wooden acting?
Nobody really gives a crap about those. Some characters seem to be purposefully wooden so you're voting for whatever is doing the killing to kill that fuck ASAP.
The true joy in horror movies is how the creators fuck with and/or manipulate the audience, not plot subtleties and deep acting performances.
I thought that Jane Levy did put in a really good performance, though.
Also, I think it's worth pointing out that the characterizations and plot of the original Evil Dead weren't that good either (Can you even remember the characters who weren't named Ash?), and that perhaps this remake suffers in those respects because it chooses to adhere to the original's formula instead of completely reinventing it.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Good performances are great and all, but (especially) in a movie like Evil Dead, the main character is the horror. Everyone else is a supporting role.
The movie did that great. Levy was pretty great as well. Great horror movie. Looking forward to the next one.
I saw the red band trailer for Evil Dead. Shit like that falls under the torture gore category, whether it's being done to another or to oneself (and if they're possessed, they aren't really doing it to themselves, now are they?).
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I'm not going to say you are wrong Ross. Not until I see it. But (opinion) you are usually so very wrong when it comes to horror that I must see it before I can attempt to trust your opinion.
At least now I know to stay for the Bruce ending!
3DS: 1521-4165-5907
PS3: KayleSolo
Live: Kayle Solo
WiiU: KayleSolo
Steam
Like what is the point.