The Evil Dead (2013) Review for the Horror Congress

Greetings Faithful Followers,

After a delay of  3 weeks I am finally sitting down and putting my stubby little digits to the keyboard to bring you my review of the 2013 remake of the 1981 classic Sam Rami film The Evil Dead. The Film opens to show a young girl chained to a pillar in a dirt floor basement/cellar, the bodies of numerous small animals are suspended on hooks and chains and a ceremony is being conducted by a snaggletoothed hillbilly voodoo/hoodoo priestess and her equally toothless assistants. The girl chained to the post begins to cry for her mother and is informed by a participating member (her father) that the mother is dead, then shit gets weird what ever demon/spirit/entity that is possessing her decides to chime in with its 2 cents worth (very disconcerting demon voice ala Exorcist). The voodoo mountain woman tells daddy that the only way to save his daughters soul it to light her up, daddy does this by throwing a jar of gasoline on her and flicking his zippo   the effect is not what he hoped for as this only elicits a pissy tirade from the demon. Finally in exasperation daddy proceeds to vaporize pumpkins head in a point blank shotgun blast ( very excellent special effects here ).

This opening scene is a departure from the original, from that point on the movie unfolds introducing us to the character of dana (Jane Levy) the failed rehab goer giving it another try at being clean and sober. Her brother Daniel (Shilo Fernandez) and friends eric olivia and natalie ( I guess cubby, corky and annette were busy..LOL) finally rounding out our little group is grandpa the dog (Inca).

The Drama of Dana and her fall from rehab and the strains it places on her relationship with daniel and their unresolved issues with their mother who also died of a long terminal illness dominate the 1st third of of the film then they discover the root cellar and the Book of the dead. The Bookworm of the group Eric begins reading from the book (dumbass move yes but we wouldn't have much of a movie without it). This awakens the kandarian demon who begins to posses and destroy the group one by one. The Film continues thru some memorable amputations and envicerations and vomit scenes with members of the group falling one by one until it is eric, daniel and the dana. Daniel sacrifices himself batteling the possessed eric by firebombing the cabin so dana can make her escape, however she must face the demon before being truly free.

All in all I found this to be a very well done homage to rami's 1981 The Evil Dead. I especially liked the touches of having bruce campbell appear in the end credits along with a audio excerpt from the  original film.
The plot and storyline of this remake flowed along very nicely and covered all the main points necessary to provide sufficeint comparison to the original. In closing I would highly recommend it to the uninitiated as well as hardcore rami fans and deadites everywhere.

Brother Jack Angry
http://www.theangrybros.com