Evil Dead (2013) Review

Evil Dead (2013)

Evil Dead follows Mia, a drug addict who enlists the help of her brother and some friends to help her break her addiction, only for one of them to accidentally unleash hell upon their cabin, as a malevolent demon possesses Mia. 

The tagline for the original Evil Dead read, “The ultimate experience in grueling terror”. Now, while filled to the brim with plenty of batshit, gory horror, it obviously comes off a bit dated now, which is why it’s such a surprise that with its 2013 remake of the same name, it finally lives up to that monstrous tagline. Technically set 30 years after everything with Ash, we now focus on a new crop of kids at the cabin, looking to break their friends addiction and thus forcing them to stay when things gets hairy (exceptional reasoning by the way).

And of course, it doesn’t take long for shit to hit the fan, and boy does it hit hard, taking Mia and poising her to be our new Cheryl, with her brother David seemingly lined up to be Ash, as he and Eric must fight off what feels like round after round of their friends going full-deadite and trying to murder them in as horrific ways as possible. But it’s the way our expectations are subverted, blowing up David and bringing Mia back from the dead, making her our new Ash, chainsaw carrying and handless as hell, that just feels so satisfying. 

Credit to director Fede Álvarez too for just making this a bloody fucking a slaughterfest. It’s so unrelenting and may be the bloodiest of the series (there’s blood rain for fucks sake). He put so much care into keeping the crude tone alive and just heightening the sense of fear to make this an outright epic horror film in it’s own right, regardless of what came before. 

We get a fair cast too, starring Elizabeth Blackmore, Jessica Lucas, Lou Taylor Pucci, Shiloh Fernandez, and Jane Levy. While I couldn’t care less about most of the performances here, Levy kicks ass immediately out of the gate, and whether she’s chilling our socks off as a deadite or quipping one-liners and mowing through demon’s heads with a chainsaw, she is utterly brilliant in every bit of this film. 

Evil Dead, directed by Fede Álvarez, is a horror remake done to perfection, honoring all of the best parts that came before and doubling down on the crude, bloody as as hell violence that made the original so iconic, giving us a modern horror remake worth rooting for. 

8.9/10