Five young people head to a remote woodland cabin to support Jane Levy in her attempt to kick a drug habit in one of the more unusual and severe rapid detoxification methods. Before long, one of the gang (nerdy Lou Taylor Pucci) finds the Necronomicon (made of human skin, no less!) in the cellar and is intrigued, whilst Levy is struggling with withdrawals and decides to do a runner into the woods. Here she is attacked and violated by something out there, but when she comes back to tell everyone, they chalk it up to crazy drug lady behaviour. But she is in fact demonically possessed, thanks to Pucci’s incantation reciting, and before long, it will affect the others one by one.
Well, this is a better “Evil Dead” wannabe than “Cabin Fever”, I’ll give it that. “Cabin Fever” wanted so badly to be “Evil Dead” (one of the most enjoyable horror films of all-time), but instead was monotonous and repellent. However, this 2013 official remake from director/co-writer Fede Alvarez is definitely inferior to the original, not to mention the delightfully silly first sequel. Neither as graphic as the original nor as tame as most mainstream horror films of the last decade or so, it won’t do much for seasoned gorehounds, though I found it quite reasonably blood-soaked, if a tad too J-horror for my liking in regards to the demons).
Like the remake of “Friday the 13th”, this is in some ways a more polished and better acted film, but was that something that was really necessary? I actually preferred the remake of “Friday” to the terrible original, but in this case, this isn’t anywhere near as effective as the original. If this weren’t called “Evil Dead”, I’d like it a helluva lot more than I do. It’s not bad, it’s just not…groovy. It’s vastly superior to “Army of Darkness”, however.
The film is quite beautifully shot by Aaron Morton, and as was the case with the “TCM” remake, you can debate whether that helps or hurts the film, but it certainly is nice to look at. I love the forest area, it’s even creepier-looking and seemingly more impenetrable than in the original. The fog looks super-thick, the trees and swamp seemingly never-ending. Lovely, atmospheric stuff early on.
One of the biggest differences to the original film is in the character played by Jane Levy. For once, we’ve got a druggie who throws her drugs away in the opening scene. Thank God, I thought. It’s a really interesting idea by Alvarez and co-writer Rodo Sayagues to have a recovering junkie potentially forced against her will to stay and detox. It’s like we get a little precursor to demon possession before it inevitably happens for real. It’s clever and interesting in a film that otherwise pretty much follows the bare bones of the original plot with the junkie character being the one to warn others about the impending doom, only to be disbelieved. If you’re looking for the infamous ‘tree rape’ scene, you won’t be terribly satisfied here. Oh, it’s present, but the film cuts away very, very quickly. But I’m not going to criticise the film for that, it’d get banned if it tried to recreate that scene in full. We live in different times, people.
The actors are mostly pretty charisma-free and uninteresting, but aside from Bruce Campbell, the actors in the original were pretty awful. Lou Taylor Pucci is about the only one here who can really act. However, the sight of him nearly breaking his hip on a toilet made me laugh, and laugh hard.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Picky fans will hate it, but I can’t say I was exactly disappointed. I’d just rather watch the original any day of the week. If you do watch the film, stay to the very end of the credits. You already know why and yes, it’s definitely ‘groovy’.
