Evil Dead Review
Saw Evil Dead last night. This is a review. For the second time because the updater decided to delete everything I already wrote. Awesome.
The Good:
-The homages and easter egg type things to the original series, such as one character giving another character a necklace with a magnifying glass pendent, Ash's car (not a spoiler as it doesn't have anything to do with the plot and is seen in the trailers), a deadite mocking the living from a crack in the basement door, some of the lines from the originals reworked or repeated ("What's wrong with her eyes?!"), etc.
-Creative use of duct tape
-The use of "Raimi Shots", including the camera following the evil through the woods, and extreme close ups of mundane items being Macguyvered into something awesome.
-The Stinger
-One unlikely character turning into a freaking bad ass.
-Visual effects that were mostly done with practical effects instead of CGI
-Along the same lines as the stinger, the recording from the orginal series being played over the credits.
-A dog named Grandpa. This is the best name for a dog, ever. Think of the confusing conversations! "We have to take Grandpa to the vet." "Grandpa has heart worms." "Did you clean up Grandpa's poop?" "We had to put Grandpa down." Awesome!
The Bad:
-This is kind of just a personal nitpick, but I kind of am tired of this gore as horror trend. The original movies were pretty gory for their time, but I've just never found this type of extreme, overdone gruesomeness frightening. Yes, it makes me turn my head and give little squeaks and screams and explaimations of "oh god!" but that isn't because I'm scared, it's because I'm grossed out. I dunno, I just find it boring, now.
-The women being used as items to further the plot and nothing more. While the two male leads were given personalities and were pretty fleshed out as far as horror movies go, the female characters, even the main female lead, were decidedly not. One girl was such a useless, invisible background character that I forgot she was even there until midway through the movie when she finally got some kind of line and thing to do. In a movie that only has five characters, there's no reason for the audience to forget one of them and there was also no reason why the badass I mentioned above couldn't have been one of the girls.
And now me thinking too much:
I'm trying to figure out exactly where this movie fits in the continuity of the series. It's been said that, if this movie does well, they want to do a direct Army of Darkness sequel with Bruce Campbell and then a final movie to connect the two series. This would be awesome. But it leads me to wonder how it will be done.
The biggest clue is Ash's car being at the cabin. In Evil Dead 2, the car ends up going with him into the past and then used as a war machine in Army of Darkness (and no I'm not using spoiler tags for a 30 year old film series). As far as I remember, it does not come back with Ash when he makes it back to the future. So it would make the most sense that this is a continuation from the first movie, where it is strongly implies that Ash dies at the end. Making Evil Dead 1 & 2 different time lines/universes clears up any confusion that comes from the first half of 2 having the same exact plot as 1 with some character and detail changes (mostly being that in 1 there was a group of friends and I think that 2 just had Ash and his girlfriend, but it's been years since I watched it so I could be wrong on that). This was actually because Raimi no longer had the rights to his first film and so couldn't use scenes from it for flash back purposes, so he just decided to retell a condensed version of the plot, but it works from an alternate universe standpoint.
So, the timeline could easily be that Ash died at the cabin in the early 80sand his car was never bothered to be recovered (if he body ever was). A few years later David and Mia (the two leads in the remake)'s family buys the cabin and turns it into a vacation home. The siblings and their friends go there for the weekend and plot happens. Or, as I can't remember if it was said that they were renting or someone owned the cabin in the first movie, the cabin just stayed in the family. Either way, Ash is dead and the Necronomicon is there.
This works out a little better than my original theory, which is that David and Mia are Ash's kids. Their father is never mentioned, only their mother and[I will use a spoiler tag, here]
with that, the only detail we know is that she died in a mental insitition. However, it is quite possible and also kind of implied that her insanity could have been the result of Deadite possession, seeing as how David is worried Mia has just lost her mind while she's possessed as she mirrors her mother.
However, this wouldn't explain why Ash's car is still there, or why he would want to keep the cabin and not get rid of the book once and for all.
Another thing that I'm trying to figure out is how the timeline of the movie works.
[And now, spoilers for the actual movie]
It starts with a severely injured girl, seemingly in shock, wandering through the woods. She is attacked, captured, and knocked out by two figures. When she wakes up, she is tied to a post in a small room with dead cats hanging from the ceiling, surrounded by creepy hillbilly looking folks speaking an odd language. She begs the only non creepy hillbilly man, revealed to be her father, to tell her what's going on. He tells her that she killed her mother and he's trying to save her. The main creepy weird language chanting woman who has been reading the Necronomicon, says that she must be cleansed with fire. Dad pours gas on his daughter and goes to light a match. She stops begging for her life and started talking like a deadite and he lights her on fire and blows her head off with a shotgun. Cue scene change and beginning of main story.
What I want to know is, when did this happen? My first thought was that this was the anthropologist who discovered the Necronomicon and made the recordings in the first movie. This was the origin of the Deadite possession in the cabin. However, it doesn't really work that this could have happened 30 years ago before the first film, nor is it possible that it could have happened after the first film before David and Mia's family got the cabin because of one thing--the dead cats.
From the very beginning of the movie, Mia says she smells something dead. No one else does, though, until Grandpa starts scratching at the rug and they find the trapdoor to the basement with blood around it. As soon as they open the door, they all smell something foul, which gets worse as they make their way through the basement to another door, which reveals the dead cat room and the smell of dead things and burnt hair. They also make sure to give us the sound of lots and lots of flies and shots of intact, non decomposed cat carcasses, which is where I lose the time line. I suppose it would be quite possible for the smell of dead flesh and burning hair to last for years in a small, enclosed space. It is not possible, though, for flies to still be attracted to the smell and flesh, especially since they're they first bugs that make dead bodies their homes, and for the cats not to have decomposed. The basement is not air-tight because, well, it's a basement under a rickety old cabin in the woods and how would the flies even get in if that there true?
So it had to have happened recently, which is supported by the lock on the front door being broken so it looks l ike someone broke in. But why were they there to start with? It was a family, not a bunch of teenagers, so I doubt they were there for drinking and sex in the woods, they make no mention of renting the cabin out or it being a timeshare (and Mia's room is covered with pictures and has her old diary in it, so it's obviously only that family's place). If the book's been at the cabin the whole time, how did that family get it? If it was elsewhere and they found it, why did they have to go to that cabin to cleanse the daughter?
The scene was great for setting the, well, scene, and giving us an idea of what was going to happen, but it doesn't really fit with anything else.
My thoughts on the ending: [Sup, more spoilers?]
I did really like that they left it open that Mia is still possessed. We never see her come back to life--no gasping breath or coughing shudders--just dead one minute and standing perfectly fine the next, which is standard for Deadite possession. Also, after David sacrifices himself, the sky rains blood and the abomination rises from hell, which means that five souls were consumed. So if Mia's soul was consumed, how does she seem to have it back? She probably doesn't. So even though she defeated the abomination, she's still carrying the Deadite possesion dorment in her.
All in all, I thought it was an awesome movie, and true to the spirit of the series, even though I'll probably continue to be annoyed with the women portrayal/usage thing.