After roughly a first half of the movie taking Evil Dead fans by the hand towards hashed and rehashed territories, making them doubt that this was a good idea at all, the movie lets go of your hand and you're alone, in the middle of the woods, and it's dark and there's strange noises all about.
It successfully palliates a somewhat shallow characterization that makes it difficult to root for the characters (with the exception of Mia, who owes a lot to a really visceral performance by Jane Levy.) And this is where Evil Dead 2013 took me by surprise. The gore feels painful, makes you cringe, churned my stomach. The use of practical effects, notably, in an era of CGI- filled movies, is extremely refreshing. This remake finds many way to bow to the original, aside the obligatory visual quotes. The camp was in Evil Dead 2, an horror comedy remaking the original already, technically. The camp? The original Evil Dead was a terrifying experience, even with Bruce Campbell's over the top performance, the film was a scare-fest, a terrifying trip even nearly ten years after its release. And I look back over 20 years ago, watching The Evil Dead on a crummy rental VHS, in the dark of my teenage bedroom one night. So I've read here and there that this remake lacks the camp of the original.
