Movie Review: Evil Dead

Most reviews of Evil Dead you will read will most likely include a comparison to the original, The Evil Dead, from 1981. I, however, have never seen that version so this review will be strictly from the point of view of a newcomer to the story.


PLOT

If you've seen a horror movie in the last 20 years, you may be turned off by the description of Evil Dead: Five young people stay at a creepy old cabin in the middle of nowhere. They unwittingly unleash an evil that terrorizes them. You've seen that movie before. But Evil Dead manages to pull off this tired setup by giving these characters a good reason for everything they do. You know all those times when you scream at horror movies saying, "Just %@$#!&* leave"? There isn't much of that here.  The story moves a lot better than most horror movies too. Instead of pausing to flesh out character development, Evil Dead gets 90% of that  out of the way in the first minutes of the film. From there, the filmmakers were free to use the rest of their time to completely destroy these characters and they do it better than any horror movie I've seen.

CHARACTERS

As hinted at above, Evil Dead is not interested in character development. Other than a few details about the main character, Mia, and her brother, you don't need to know anything else about the people in this movie. Frankly, they are only there to die. In other movies this would be a problem. After all, don't you need to care about the characters to feel the danger and significance of their deaths? In Evil Dead, however, the deaths are so horrific that caring about the characters isn't necessary and not wasting time on character development and back story actually disorients you in a way that makes the film that much more disturbing.

VISUALS

It's not often that horror movies make me want to look away but Evil Dead pulled it off. The best part about the visuals are that they are mostly practical instead of CGI. It gives every scene a sense of absolute realism and makes it that much scarier. One scene in particular involves a woman who had a face no longer having a face...and that stuff is freaky. If you like gore, Evil Dead has plenty but if you like supernatural, creepy-young-girl horror, there's plenty for you here too.

DIALOGUE

Evil Dead's dialogue is pretty good. Sure, it falls victim to some of the cliches of horror movies and there isn't too much to praise but it's also very self-aware. For instance, one character keeps saying "It's going to be okay", your typical horror movie line. But then another character breaks in and acknowledges the ridiculousness of saying that when everything is getting much much worse.

SCARES

Horror fans see horror films to be frightened. So does Evil Dead live up to the hype it creates for itself as "The Most Terrifying Film You Will Ever Experience"? Not even close. But it will make you a little sick to your stomach and if you have a basement, you won't want to go down there alone for a few days.


Plot - 2
Characters - 1.5
Visuals - 2
Dialogue - 1
Scares - 1.5
Dusty's Score - 8 out of 10