Five's Company, Six a Crowd

The girlfriend experience in Evil Dead

«« Evil Dead. Written by Fede Alvarez & Diablo Cody. Directed by Fede Alvarez. 

         

If the effect of Sam Raimi’s 1981 The Evil Dead had to be described in one word, it wouldn’t be “scream”—it will be “hoot”. Like many low-budget cult favorites, it’s memorable not for its technical polish, premise or writing. Instead, it’s more about the goofy energy, the unapologetic, balls-out determination to be the one guy at the party with the lampshade on his head. So when the prospect of a slick, updated remake of a campy, deliberately unpolished cult masterpiece comes up, we have to wonder, “why”?

          Silly question, when the perfume of a lucrative franchise is in the air. Thus we have Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead, a modernized, bigger-budget return to the old haunted bungalow in the woods (the definite article in the original title, alas, seems to have been severed from the rest of the body). As before, five twenty-somethings go up for a weekend at a dilapidated cabin, unaware that the resident demon has other plans for them. To the age-old question, “Why don’t they just get out of there?”, screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult) has a convenient answer: one of the women, Mia (Jane Levy) is an addict, and their weekend is an intervention. No matter what happens, declares brother David (Shiloh Fernandez), they’re not going to let his little sis leave the premises—cat carcasses and spell manuals sheathed in human skin notwithstanding.

          Cody contributes some plausible dialog, and Uruguayian-born Alvarez shoots his mayhem better than a first-timer might be expected. There aren’t many jolts, but there are enough dismemberments and projectile-vomitings to keep the proceedings lively. Trouble is, along with the low-rent special effects of the original (which included, I believe, a corpse gushing actual oatmeal), the update exorcises most of the fun. All the 2013 actors are better, but none have the appeal of the young Bruce Campbell, whose square-jawed mug shouts “camp” as loudly as Leslie Nielsen’s. Where the original has become dated that charming way that big hair and Mom jeans now have, the remake is unimaginatively current. Alvarez and Cody would have done better to keep the story set in the early ‘80’s, where at least they could have derived some period humor.

          Having become bored by the appearance of the third or fourth blood-licking ghoul, it occurred to me that in both this and the original Evil Dead the three females are the first to turn bad. Seems that Diablo Cody missed another opportunity here, as this story can easily be read as a fantasy of male dread of certain womanly bodily functions. “Don’t trust anything that bleeds for three days and doesn’t die,” goes the old saying, which might as well apply to demonic possessions of permanent and monthly types. When it comes to some remakes, even regurgitated oatmeal can look good by comparison.

© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro