So the plot of this movie is basically the same as the original - a group of teens go to a remote cabin the woods, discover the Book of the Dead, unwittingly read an incantation out loud that summons an evil demon that torments them all night. The only difference is, whereas in the original they are at the cabin for shits and giggles, in this movie they are there to help a girl get off heroine. I understand the logic of this, but I'm not so sure taking a heroine addict to an obvious murder cabin is the best way to help them with substance abuse.
This movie is surprisingly passable, and is perhaps the best horror movie I have watched so far in my marathon... which isn't saying much, but as opposed to the last few films, with this one I wasn't ever bored. Oh, the movie is full of tired, ridiculous horror tropes, like characters making incredibly stupid choices, not to mention laughable moments like how viciously mauled the nerdy character gets before he finally expires (spoilers!). Seriously, there are about four times in the movie when I thought that character was finally going to die, only for him to somehow keep living.
The camera angles are all done very well and certainly tip a hat to Sam Raimi's original film, without being too tediously reverential. Also, a lot of the special effects were done really well, using CGI very sparingly, and deferring to real effects for most of the gore.
The only things that got on my nerves were that none of the characters were very interesting and not a single one, even the last survivor, held a candle to Bruce Campbell's character, Ash. When this movie was being made, a lot of people speculated how an Evil Dead movie could even be considered without Bruce Campbell, as embodied the role of Ash like Harrison Ford embodies Indiana Jones - it was inconcievable to think of anyone replacing him. The producers of the movie made a wise decision - don't even bother trying to replace him. They just came up with a cast of all new characters, but the problem is they should have still found a leading man or woman with enough raw charisma to carry the movie with as much aplomb as Campbell. Part of the appeal of all of the Evil Dead movies is watching this character deal with this constant madness, horror, and physical punishment, yet somehow find the ability to overcome it while spouting out cheesy one-liners like: "Hey she-bitch - come get some." Without that character, well, it's just a bunch of generic teen characters drawn out of the same stock as any other movie getting picked off one-by-one.
My only other issue is it felt like they tried to jam too much story into a pretty simple concept: the Book of the Dead unleashes an invisible evil that terrorizes the people who summon it. In the original movies, the solution came down to reading an incantation from the book to send the evil back whence it came... if the characters could survive that long. In this, it didn't feel as simple - it seemed like they wanted to over explain it, and come up with a more drawn out, complicated solution, which nobody watches Evil Dead for.
Overall, though, it's a decent film that pays homage to the original, but I would heartily recommend just sticking to the originals and ignoring this one - especially if you haven't seen the original movies yet. This movie gets 2 out of 4 chainsaws.
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