Dear Reader,

Please allow me to start this review by not wasting your time. This is NOT a positive movie review. It’s horrendous. I’m about to rip this movie apart. If you no longer hold the desire to finish this review because I’ve already answered the big question, then please, move along. The rest of the massacre on this screen is purely to explain WHY a movie with such great potential buried itself, and never came back up for a breath of air.

Where does one begin to describe the complex and entertaining movie “The Evil Dead” directed by Sam Raimi in 1981? The slapstick low-budget horror film is a cult classic. Every horror nerd has heard of “The Evil Dead”. Which brings up the question: is a remake such a good idea? Well…yes and no.

With a budget of no more than $400,000, Raimi put his skills to the test and came up with a horror masterpiece. Nowadays, with special effects being as they are, it’s inevitable that writers and/or directors want to get their hands on classic films and give them the Hollywood magic that we see today. “The Evil Dead” being one of those. It’s a simple horror film with a mood no one has ever seen before. It’s been over thirty years, why not remake it?

But Hollywood’s been wrong before. It may seem like a good idea to give a cult classic a makeover and put it back on the silver screen for a fresh new look, but that’s the thing: it’s a cult classic. Don’t touch it. Leave it be.

There are many many things wrong with the new “Evil Dead”. The film has its reigns handed over to Fede Alvarez, who directs it and wrote the screenplay along with Diablo Cody. Let the dissecting begin. When a film has a screenplay, and the screenplay is just really bad, you have to make up for it. The easiest way is to give it a boost with some fine acting. It’s too bad we don’t see that here.

We get our hearts torn out, and our brains stomped on listening to horrible actors deliver horrible and cheesy lines. The position of the “main character” switches between the character of David, and his sister Mia. David is played by some guy who I’ve never seen but looks like Elijah Wood and John Mayer’s smashed DNA, so I think I’ll just call him John Wood. The point is, John Wood won’t be receiving an Academy Award for this role. It was laughable. Right off the bat, I got tired of seeing his face, and hearing his voice.

That being said, Jane Levy (Mia) isn’t all that great either. Sure the special effects that make her eyes turn yellow are scary to look at for the first couple of minutes. But after a while it’s nothing new, and it never advances from there. The cast of five doesn’t impress. Each character is dull and you forget about them fifteen minutes after walking out of the theater. And that’s not the only thing you forget after walking out of the theater. You also forget why you even wanted to see this movie. Then you question the writing, and why the film ended three different times, and it just spirals downhill from there until tears are racing down your face.

One thing’s for sure, Alvarez teases the audience in the beginning with fancy camera angles, but then they’re gone. We never see any more of them. He grabs our attention, then slaps us in the face by presenting us with this piece of garbage. The worst part is, the makers tried to pass this movie off by saying it’s “fun”. It’s as if they knew the film wasn’t up to par, so they made an excuse and thought it would slither on by unnoticed.

With “Evil Dead”, we get more blood and gore than we do scares and chills. When I spend $9.75 to see a horror movie, I at least want to have nightmares about it.

To sum up, this movie is NOT worth your time. If you really want a good scare, sit down with a bowl of popcorn and watch “The Shining”.