People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, or so the saying goes. I live in a terrace, so I figure I'm safe for now. Fetch the gravel.
So I'm going to make the assumption that you fine upstanding people are astute and alert and have a reasonable comprehension of what's going on around you. This may be a mistake of course; you may have stumbled drunkenly across this blog and only keep coming back because you accidentally set it as your home page and due to state-dependent memory you can't remember how to fix it or even that you have to. It's OK, we're inclusive here; you're welcome to hang around till IT support get back to you. You are 17th in the queue and your call is very important to us.
My point, however, is that you may have noticed that practically everything coming out of Hollywood is a prequel, sequel, reboot, rework, adaptation, re-imagining, part of a cinematic universe or just plain, straight up intellectual copyright infringement. It's been that way for years and shows exactly no signs of changing. I genuinely can't remember the last new film I saw which was an original story. That's OK though, it's fine. I mean it's not like it demonstrates an inevitable and likely irreversible dearth of originality or anything. Not even remotely. Anyway...
It's been a bit of a mixed bag so far though all in all. I mean, there's some stuff out there in recent years I didn't hate (even though I probably should have): Total Recall wasn't completely horrible, Robocop was OK, I'll chuck money at almost anything with an Autobot or Decepticon logo on it (that's an entirely different post in and of itself). Conversely there's been no shortage of dross, which brings me conveniently to Evil Dead.
The original trilogy has achieved almost mythical status amongst horror aficionados and who knows what would have become of Bruce Campbell without it? It was one of the original 'video nasties' as they were dubbed and I seem to remember it being banned by the BBFC for a while. I don't know if we're becoming less squeamish or people were just prissy idiots back then, but if you go back to it now it's all ketchup and poorly fitting contact lenses. And lest we forget, Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn is technically a remake of Evil Dead anyway. Same star, same director, slightly bigger budget. It may even be the first example of a remake being better than the original. Ooh, controversy.
Evil Dead 3 was the first 15 rated movie I saw legally at the cinema, on my fifteenth birthday. My Dad took me and being of that age I decided I wanted to sit right at the front whilst he sat at a far more reasonable and comfortable distance somewhere about 10 rows back. I genuinely feel bad that I didn't sit with him now; teenage me wasn't embarrassed to sit with him but adult me sees it as a proper dick move. It still makes for a good story though and the film has it's place among my top ten because of it. So you might understand why I wasn't particularly thrilled at the prospect of a reboot, Sam Raimi approved or otherwise. I did go to the cinema to watch it though, either because I'm a well-balanced individual who likes to make informed opinions and decisions or because I'm a schmuck. Jury's out.
It's really much easier to talk about what the reboot wasn't rather than what it was. I think. It's a fairly well-trodden premise by now: group of kids turn up at a cabin in the woods, things kick off, everybody ends up soaked in any number of bodily fluids (mostly their own), someone triumphs over evil, we all get on with our lives. Standard Operating Procedure. What Evil Dead managed to do so effectively was marry over-the-top horror and gore with slapstick comedy and somehow make it work. I don't know whether managing to include an arboreal sexual assault and a man being beating up Buster Keaton-style by his own severed hand in the same movie is genius, but it's something. That's the glorious thing about Raimi: one minute you're chuckling to yourself, the next you're wondering what you've just seen. With Fede Alvarez you're just left wondering if the script meetings were conducted under the supervision of a shadowy cabal of humourless Hollywood drones, excising the charm and humour only to be replaced with fake blood, charmless gross-out prosthetics, disposable protagonists and the occasional Easter egg to keep the fans from breaking out the pitchforks straight away. If I've learned anything from my years on this Earth, it's that pitchfork wielding mobs are more than just a hackneyed cliche; they are a very real threat to health and safety, should be employed sparingly, and then only by trained professionals. What this remake wasn't was witty, fun, shocking or any of the other things that made the originals great. The main thing it wasn't, was anything new.
So the nausea-inducing Deadites-eye view camera makes an obligatory appearance, phoning it in from Kandar and collect a fat paycheck without having to really leave its trailer. (I think that might be the first time I've anthropomorphised a camera move. Go me.) The Necronomicon obviously shows up, but it's going through an emo phase so it's wrapped in black plastic and barbed wire. I guess that makes it literally and figuratively misunderstood. There's a nod to the chainsaw and the boomstick and even a last minute, post-credits sting from Ash himself. There's only so much nostalgia you can get away with when your movie is a run of the mill horror by numbers where the most impressive thing in it is the sheer amount of fake blood they got through; 70,000 gallons according to reports. That's a lot of blood, but gore alone does not a good film make.
Maybe it's me. I'm not a demanding film-goer by any means (see above RE: Transformers) but I'm starting to get irked somewhat by how badly some of these remakes are being thought out and how badly they're being executed. They seem to be making money though, so brace yourselves, buckle up and try not to throw up your nachos (incidentally the most anti-social cinema food you can buy). I am however, by no means one of those cretins who moans on and on about having my childhood ruined by reboots; if your memories are so easily destroyed by an hour and a half of squawking idiots running around a cabin through a small lake's worth of fake blood then you probably have bigger issues my friend. At least you were never molested by a tree.
So the nausea-inducing Deadites-eye view camera makes an obligatory appearance, phoning it in from Kandar and collect a fat paycheck without having to really leave its trailer. (I think that might be the first time I've anthropomorphised a camera move. Go me.) The Necronomicon obviously shows up, but it's going through an emo phase so it's wrapped in black plastic and barbed wire. I guess that makes it literally and figuratively misunderstood. There's a nod to the chainsaw and the boomstick and even a last minute, post-credits sting from Ash himself. There's only so much nostalgia you can get away with when your movie is a run of the mill horror by numbers where the most impressive thing in it is the sheer amount of fake blood they got through; 70,000 gallons according to reports. That's a lot of blood, but gore alone does not a good film make.
Maybe it's me. I'm not a demanding film-goer by any means (see above RE: Transformers) but I'm starting to get irked somewhat by how badly some of these remakes are being thought out and how badly they're being executed. They seem to be making money though, so brace yourselves, buckle up and try not to throw up your nachos (incidentally the most anti-social cinema food you can buy). I am however, by no means one of those cretins who moans on and on about having my childhood ruined by reboots; if your memories are so easily destroyed by an hour and a half of squawking idiots running around a cabin through a small lake's worth of fake blood then you probably have bigger issues my friend. At least you were never molested by a tree.
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