Evil Dead (2013)

[MacGuffin]

Red Band Trailer

[samsong]

i'm fucking down.

[jenkins]

i like that in modage's scathing review of this he went to bat for fun, e.g.

Featuring truly shocking levels of violence but none of the wit or fun of the original, the new "Evil Dead" is mostly a dud.

Watching the director's short film ("Panic Attack"), one would've expected a similar playful inventiveness to carry over

There is a fine line in horror films between those intense films that still invite the audience to have fun and those that are just a punishing experience and the new "Evil Dead" seems to share more in common with the recent-ish wave of extreme empty French horror ("Inside," "Haute Tension") than with the original.

(in fact, it's been named the new french extremity)

i think there are a lot of people, myself included, who miss fun in movies

[polkablues]

Reelist got me right:

Polka doesn't like his horror fun, I've gleaned. He prefers it to be another 'Fu' word, Fuuuucccckkked up.

In other words,

i'm fucking down.

And mod can piss on High Tension all he wants, but I will not have Inside slandered so casually.  If he talks shit about Martyrs, we've got a fight on our hands.

[jenkins]

to each his own cinema. you must be like a pig in shit right now, 'cause the vast majority of movies right now are dour as fuck. seems like. when i saw kill list i had to go into the lobby and then watch the rest of the movie from a standing position in the back of the theater, and i just finished watching pillow talk for the third time this week. so that's me

but evil dead, it's like we were playing risk and the fun team had russia and then team f'ed up came and they had more numbers and attacked the country, and anyway i can't remember how to play risk, but it sounds like we lost land right here

[modage]

I actually didn't write "empty," my editors (who prob haven't seen the films) added that. I like "Inside" and "High Tension" to varying degrees and don't think they're empty (I just edited the article to remove that) but they're anything but fun. Was just saying that it's weird to make an Evil Dead remake that doesn't capture the spirit of the originals. It would be like someone remaking "Fargo" and ditching all the that dark comedy and just making a GRITTY MURDER STORY, which would be like, "well, why did you remake this at all?"

[polkablues]

On the other hand, what's the point of remaking something if you're not going to do something different with it? The idea of some other director trying to emulate Raimi's tone, or some other actor mugging like Bruce Campbell, is truly horrifying to me.

[©brad]

Lesson being, never remake anything.

[jenkins]

the better and bigger principle does seem to be "if you can do something different, why remake" I agree

does this add dimensions to evil dead? no, it strips it of dimensions

[polkablues]

I can't get behind that philosophy. I don't want to hear a cover song that tries to sound exactly like the original, I want to hear one that takes a new angle on it, that treats the original as a piece of architecture to be decorated in a whole different style.

I could get behind cbrad's idea, though. When in doubt, just build your own from scratch.

[jenkins]

I can't get behind that philosophy. I don't want to hear a cover song that tries to sound exactly like the original, I want to hear one that takes a new angle on it, that treats the original as a piece of architecture to be decorated in a whole different style.

I could get behind cbrad's idea, though. When in doubt, just build your own from scratch.

wait, what. why are you trying to make it sound like i suggested a philosophy of sameness? polanski's cul-de-sac has fun, is it the same movie as evil dead?

you're just saying this movie does things you like, and i'm just saying this movie does things i don't like

and 1/2 of my sentences was in support of what cbrad said

[polkablues]

I misinterpreted what you had written in your last post. Initially I read it as you saying that remakes shouldn't try to be different from the original, and that's what I was responding to, though now I realize that's not at all what you were saying. My bad.

I still stand by my last post, just disregard the argumentative aspects of it.

[modage]

I'm not looking for a step-by-step recreation or something and avoiding an Ash-like stand-in may be one of the best creative decisions they made making this thing. BUT unfortunately the direction they took doesn't work. I thought the trailer looked like hot shit too so in theory there is a harder edged version that could've worked but I don't think this was it.

[03]

so was this good? don't lie.

[RegularKarate]

so was this good? don't lie.

No.

The only good that might come from this is that it might cue a wave of horror movies that move back into being gory and not so watered down, but it takes more than that to make a good movie.

This was a series of pretty boring shock scares mixed with awful dialog and really forced nods to the original. Like, you know... a remake.