When I was younger I asked my Mum how
Corned Beef was made to which she replied, “You don't want to know”. I have
never eaten it since. Apparently all it is, is beef treated with corns of salt
however by leaving it up to my imagination, I created the worst possible
scenario. With as little information as possible available, to me, Corned Beef appeared
to be the cow’s tits having been fucked off by a randy farmer and left to
fester in soupy bucket of bull-spunk and diseased farmyard shit. Interestingly
this is kind of like a cinematic technique used in horror movies during which
filmmakers cunningly imply violence allowing the audiences imagination to fill
in the gaps. For example, in Psycho's famous shower scene, not once do
we actually witness the knife penetrate Janet Leigh's body but instead it is
simply suggested so heavily that we think we did. Opposing this school of thought
however, is Sam Raimi whose entire career has been based on the idea of showing
more than we really needed to see. His first film was of course The Evil
Dead which was famously made for so little money that, to match the budget
now, all you'd need is a few hours on your knees in an alley with a lonely
stranger. With that in mind you'd expect Raimi to take the cheaper option of
having most of the violence happen off screen as a way of avoiding the cost of
effects. In Psycho I only thought I'd witnessed a full on stabbing
however with The Evil Dead I very definitely saw a tree get shoved up
some screaming girl’s minge.
Since its release in 1981, Raimi's infamous
gorefest has gone on to become a cult classic and personally, I fucking love
it. I mean perhaps the branch-up-the-vadge was a slight mistake but there's no
doubting that The Evil Dead is a masterpiece just brimming with fun,
blood, bile and random green gunky shit. However there's also no doubting that
over the last thirty years the film has aged pretty badly. The effects are
still impressive but they're hardly photorealistic and I'm pretty sure the only
people who'll be frightened by it now are those with a life threatening allergy
to mushy peas. Though for me, that's not an issue with the clunky stop-motion
look only adding to its handmade charm. The actors too where never of the
highest quality with the only decent performance coming from a man who is
ten-percent human and ninety-percent chin. However if you can only afford one
good actor in your entire movie then Bruce Campbell is very definitely the one
you'd want.
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| Starring Mickey Rourke... |
In general, the idea of remaking a classic
horror film fills me with a kind of rage
that makes blood drip from my ears and hate leak from my soul. The original Amityville
Horror was a nun-puking-load-of-bollocks and yet somehow the 2005 remake
managed to be even duller. I don't even want to talk about the Texas
Chainsaw Massacre remake because
it's too traumatic for me. I've locked the idea of that crappy movie away in
the little box of forgotten memories I keep in my brain along with childhood
trauma and explanations to my burn-scars. However in the case of The Evil
Dead, I awaited it with a kind of optimistic open-mindedness. I figured
that at least Raimi was heavily involved with this new one and he'd already
pretty successfully remade the film himself with the equally classic Evil
Dead 2. Not only that but his reason for wanting to make it again was
because of how badly aged the first one has now become. Like I say, I love the
shittiness of the original but there is something interesting about seeing it
with modern effects and hopefully better acting. I suppose on top of all that,
the reason I didn't approach this remake with arse clenching anxiety was
because like all the others it wasn't produced by cinematic mega-cunt Michael
Bay.
This new Evil Dead begins with a
gang of youths holidaying at a cabin in the woods whilst one of their junkie
friends goes cold turkey. Obviously this can be quite a tough experience to go
through and so it'd be best to do it in a calm, controlled environment. The
stupid retards however instead select the most clichéd horror movie setting
possible. I'm assuming that an ancient Indian burial ground, nuclear testing
site and Joseph Fritzl's basement had already been booked out that weekend.
Also I've never had to try and give up a smack habit before but if I ever do, I
think I'd prefer a place that didn't have a basement full of cats hanging from
the ceiling. I know animals are meant to be therapeutic but I don't think
that's still the case if their eyes are popping out of their strangled blue
heads. Just to make life a little more interesting, the gang also decide to
read from a book that unleashes a shitload of evil demons. I guess in general
if you find a book in which somebody has scrawled “don't read this
motherfucking shit”, then perhaps it'd be best to put it down and just wait for
its film adaptation instead. I found a blood stained threat identical to that
in a book once which is why I'm still yet to read The Da Vinci Code.
So having now seen it I guess the biggest
question is, is it good enough to justify its existence? Well if I was being
generous, I guess I'd say it probably just about is. As I mentioned, Raimi's
goal was to remake the film with modern day effects so that he could make
something as scary as the original originally was. Well on the first point, the
film is very definitely a success as the gore is fucking mental. Blood is casually
sprayed everywhere and people puke shit up like they're having a pressure
competition at a bulimics convention. There's also a few scenes in which people
quickly rip off their own arms as though we're watching a Danny Boyle movie in
fast-forward and on crack. However, for me at least this Evil Dead just
wasn't scary in the slightest. Stephen King famously described the original as
being, “the ultimate experience in gruelling terror”,
which this very much wasn't. Nor does this film fix the main issue of the tree
rape scene which is simply redone but to a point where the branch goes all the
way up the new girl’s vagina and confusingly never comes out or is mentioned
again.
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| "Hey kids!" |
But despite all that I genuinely found the film
to be really good fun. Once it gets going, the pace of the thing is absolutely
relentless and I think the violence is genuinely inventive. I also liked that
because the main character was going cold turkey, everybody assumed her first
demon attack was either bullshit or just the fevered delusions of a desperate
smack-head. Unlike the first film there was no one person here to root for but
to be honest I was quite happy to watch all the new characters get chopped up.
I'd much prefer a new cast of faceless meat puppets than see anybody new attempt
to play the original’s Ash. There's only one man groovy enough to play him and
sadly he's at an age where it'd end up being the creepiest thing in the film if
he was hanging out with a group of teenagers. In fact by having completely new
characters, this new film almost plays out as a kind of sequel in which a fresh
group of morons stay in the same cabin with their fates playing out in a
slightly different way. I mean they still end up as the main ingredients to
cheap supermarket burgers but it's nice that there was some variation from what
was expected.
If the new film lets itself down
slightly it's that it goes on for about ten minutes too many and accidentally
descends dangerously close to the formula of Michael Bay's crappy remakes. It
also works too hard at saving the life of a character that I pretty much had
nothing invested in anyway. There's a bit where the junkie actually dies but is
brought back to life by being stabbed in the heart with a syringe attached to a
car battery. I mean if resurrection is that fucking easy then I can't help but
think that the NHS is being severely over-funded. Like I say though, I did
enjoy the film and I'd like to think it might encourage at least some people to
go back and discover the originals. I guess you could argue that this film is a
little clichéd but then the The Evil Dead invented the clichés so that
really can't be helped. The only
way to avoid that issue would be to be subvert it instead but then that
wouldn't be an Evil Dead remake but a Cabin In The Woods remake and it's certainly
too soon to be rehashing that.
Like I've said, I personally did
enjoy it but as a fan of the original- if you go in hoping to be disappointed
then you more than likely will be. If it wasn't for the title, I'm sure this
film would be forgotten in time but for the ninety minutes it was on I
certainly enjoyed myself. Perhaps it was directed by some bloke called Fede
Alvarez but Raimi's influence definitely
shines through. I've no idea where they're going to go in the sequel, but for
now let’s just appreciate that unlike other horror remakes, this was not a complete
mess. It won't swallow your soul but if you've got an old student card to
fraudulently claim the discount, it's certainly worth at least five quid.
Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.
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