In a way, I’m disappointed by Evil Dead‘s prologue scene, since it removes the possibility of the film being a nightmare metaphor for facing and exorcising one’s demons. I mean, no, that’s not fair. It’s still a metaphor for that, but I wish I was able to believe that was true internally to the story instead of only externally, and the prologue is the line between those possibilities.

Metaphor aside, Evil Dead is a reasonably faithful adaptation of Sam Raimi’s original 1981 flick. Five friends head out to a cabin in the woods[1], find and foolishly read the Book of the Dead sitting in the basement, and then some fragment of hell breaks loose, the trees get frisky, and people start getting dismembered. I’m sure there are movies I’ve seen with more blood in them, but I’m hard-pressed to remember one. I know for a fact I’ve seen films with more gore, if only because nobody spilled their intestines. Still, though, I don’t think I’ve seen any movie that has as many things going into and especially being pulled out of someone’s body. So, that’s a claim to fame, I guess? At the least, you know what to expect now.

The acting (except for maybe the blonde chick) was above average, the effects were impressive (especially if you unfairly compare them against the intervening three decades[2] and more than an order of magnitude smaller budget of the original), and the soundtrack was pretty darn good. You could do worse for a horror outing and you could do a hell of a lot worse for a remake outing. …but seriously, who sees movies because they’re remakes?

[1] Not a Cabin in the Woods, though the influences of the original on that very fine movie are easy to spot.
[2] God help us.