Evil Dead (2013)

So, after twenty years, fans of Within the Woods, The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness got this:

Yes, terrifyingly bad writing and acting and logic

Evil Dead (2013) is the remake/sequel (resequel? seremake?) of The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II. Oh god, I feel a rant coming on. *RANT ALERT*

Impressions
A jeep heads down a highway and across a river and oh god, is that a CG jeep? I thought there was no CG? Anyway, five 'friends' are meeting up to give Mia an intervention. Oh, and there's a dog named Grandpa who might be the most well rounded character. Sorry, still recapping, umm, they go into the house, find the book, which has strange scribbled pen translations in it, and one of the stupid characters reads it. Um... good enough.

Hey, this modern remake has a cast of characters claiming to be friends but argue and bicker as soon as they can! Well, that's different from the first one, and the same as every other horror movie. Oh and the character names spell out DEMON, that's cute; let's see in the original they spell out CLASS, truly a scathing criticism from young Sam Raimi. This film does have a few original things to it: the premise of taking a friend away for an intervention and the opening scene where they burn a 'witch.' Aside from that this film is a bad reenactment of every significant scene from the first two Evil Dead films. The characters are moronic and for 80% of the film we really have no solid protagonist...

Deja Vu from the three other characters she's ripping off?

Our... Wait, who's the Hero?
Mia is our heroine, I think, well she spends most of the running time as a deadite. She draws because Cheryl did in the original. She wears a Michigan State shirt because they did in the original. She also has the strange ability to pull her arm off like a lizard disconnecting its tail... Are we sure she's human?

David discovers the corpse of the only likeable character

David is our hero, while Mia's a deadite anyway; he's also Mia's brother and the organizer of the intervention. He cares about Mia and stuff and gives her a charm like the one Ash gave Linda because it was in The Evil Dead. He does succeed in saving Mia through a combination of willpower and bullshit. He's also thoroughly boring, so moving on!

Reading's for suckers, kids!

Bickering Observers
Eric is our would be smart guy. He's an idiot. He frees the demon by reading some of the passages, but then just stops. You'd think when they find a book and notice that things are happening from it and that pages are filled in later; they might read ahead. Nope, reading's for nerds! He does have the brilliant idea of burning the book, but in another sweep of genius, it doesn't burn!

Olivia is a nurse who gets killed before being able to render any medical aid. Um, why bother pointing out that she's a nurse? It leaves David to patch everything up with duct tape!

She lopped it off at the wrist; not that it mattered.

Natalie is David's girlfriend. She has no personality and even less screen time. She makes out with deadite Mia then it gets into hand then it goes bad then she lops it off and becomes a deadite anyway... Um, movie, the point is over there. This is really grating since losing an arm means something in this franchise! By that point in the film it's had several references and it almost seemed plausible that she might be our elusive protagonist. Alas, perhaps in a better film.

She'll swallow your soul but won't have fun doing it.

Evil Foe
Abomination Mia takes the fun of the deadites and changes them into disgusting freaks. The former delight that the deadites took from torturing their foes is replaced by the deadites being stupid mindless killing machines. Not to mention, in the new and improved vine rape scene, Abomination Mia appears and, uh, regurgitates a big black vine to 'infect' Mia.Not to mention the tongue splitting incident. Charming.

They're just trying to find the low point of the film.

Familiar Atmosphere
It forecasts just about every death and disfigurement that's going to happen during the start of the film. The visuals are mostly good when they're not being disgusting. They use almost every non X-rated bodily fluid they could. After a while it just becomes numbing. The effects are fine, but they're used on characters that are nigh impossible to care about.

In the End
It rains blood and Mia fights Abomination Mia because Ash did that in Army of Darkness, arm ripping and chainsawing abound.

Overall
The films biggest problem is that is does not stand on its own. It is a badly cobbled together rehash of the first two films that plays on fan familiarity with the franchise. Watch this film if you want to see a remake/sequel done horribly wrong.
2/10

Next time: a more accurate re-imagining of The Evil Dead!