“Evil Dead” – Enteraining But Not Scary - Spoilers

05/04/13 01:43 Filed in: Movie Review

The Evil Dead is not scary. But it is a good time, and due to that alone it will likely do well financially. That’s not to say Evil Dead doesn’t have a couple scary moments. It does - it has exactly two. One is when Elizabeth Blackmore’s character is struggling with whether to cut off her arm with an electric knife and Mia pops up from the basement and simply stares at her. Doesn’t say a word – just looks at her, real long like. The other is when Mia is being buried with a plastic bag over her head, face enshrined in dirt, and starts speaking to her would-be executioner through the plastic bag. Highly effective.

The basic story of the Evil Dead is that a group of young folks stay at a cabin in the woods and unearth a book of evil spells that releases all manner of spooks and ghouls, which slowly inhabit the souls of each character. Oh, and speaking of Cabin in the Woods, Fede Alvarez, the director of ED, was asked whether he was nervous making his movie in the wake of Joss Whedon’s ultimate meta horror flick. Basically, he said he wasn’t and that Whedon’s film was more a love letter to the genre than anything. Yeah… um, the problem there is that Whedon and Drew Goddard authored a making-of book wherein they essentially said that Cabin in the Woods sprang from their distaste for the long line of not-so-good horror movies released in the last decade (and that Cabin tried, on some level, to account for the inexplicable behavior of the inhabitants of such flicks). Unfortunately, ED might be such a movie. People go into darkened basements they shouldn’t; pull back shower curtains with demonic gamines waiting behind them, and generally act illogically.

A few notes about the filmmaking. Alvarez will definitely work again. Despite the ED’s lack of true chills, it is well shot. In fact, it feels very much like a more intense version of Drag Me to Hell (one of my favs), right down to “The Book of the Dead,” which could easily be volume two of whatever book chronicled the Lamia. The end of ED, where Mia faces off with the demon in a torrential downpour of blood, is visually epic. Unfortunately, the acting is pretty wooden (Jessica Lucas better not ever stop being hot, because when she does it’s over), and the script was just basic. There were lots of unintentional laughs with the hipster crowd I saw this with a day before the opening.

As you know, the theme of AllGoodThings is that we don’t review stinkers. If you see it here, it’s comes pre-approved. And that’s case with Evil Dead. It’s a solid movie that is pretty entertaining. It’s just not scary.

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“Evil Dead” – Enteraining But Not Scary - *Spoilers*

“Evil Dead” – Enteraining But Not Scary - Spoilers