Evil Dead

Film Review by John Nugent | 15 Apr 2013
Film title: Evil Dead
Director: Fede Alvarez
Starring: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Jessica Lucas
Release date: 19 Apr
Certificate: 18

Few 80s horrors have escaped the unflinching gaze of the ruthless Hollywood remake machine. But some thought The Evil Dead, Sam Raimi’s scrappy, much-loved debut, too sacred a cow to receive such treatment –especially since Raimi effectively remade it himself six years later with Evil Dead II. And yet here we are. 

Fede Alvarez’s re-imagining, flat and witless, doffs a deferential cap in all the wrong places. Present and correct is the bloody chainsaw, and that aggressively libidinous tree. But gone is the innovative camerawork and B-movie charm; instead we get slick, dull production values and glossy over-lighting. Gone, too, is the cheeky sense of humour; in its place, a peculiarly po-faced script. And most conspicuously of all, gone is Bruce Campbell. 

A bland cast of expendable twenty-somethings are scant substitute for Campbell’s angular jaw, arched eyebrow and groovy one-liners. Like most remakes, Evil Dead makes a miserably weak argument for its own existence – especially when stacked against a superior original. [John Nugent]