Remakes are a funny old game, as I've remarked before, most recently when stating that a flick which would make for a good remake is Drive-In Massacre. One of the biggest problems with remakes that I find, however, is that they can never live up to the vibe that the original exudes. The scope of the remake is far larger, the production design is through-the-roof comparatively, and in-place of discovering a long-established classic during your formative years with fellow-minded classmates, you've got the big marketing push with the inevitable appearance at a Comic-Con.
This brings me to the 2013 remake of The Evil Dead –
as first shown to us at the 2012 New York Comic-Con – and it has my fanboy mind
all over the place. I'm a huge admirer of the original movie (which I first
saw aged 14 after buying a VHS copy – which was at the time still severely cut
by the BBFC – from my local post office), so the first mention a while back
of the film being remade, sent we horror fans into a right old tizzy. The
announcement that Diablo Cody would be heading up screenwriting duties was
controversial enough in itself, but on the other hand – under the banner of
Ghost House Pictures – the original creators of the The Evil Dead were
actively involved, and had picked an unknown (Fede Alvarez) for directing duties (an offer
that no sane aspiring filmmaker would turn down).
Click “READ MORE” below for a slew of screenshots and responses...
SCALE: The original was a modest indie flick funded
by a collective of Dentists and other local businessmen. The remake was always
going to have a bigger budget ($14 million according to IMDb) and a grander scale – but I always loved the
small-scale, do-it-yourself, down-and-dirty vibe of the 1981 original.
THE CABIN: Re-creating the infamous cabin in the woods
is, relatively speaking, a straight-forward task. Single level, two windows
with a door in the middle, and a swing bench on the right-hand-side – simple.
You can't go far wrong in this regard.
That said, we circle back to the increased budget and scope
afforded to remakes (cash and resources the originals pined for, but
triumphed without due to hard graft, creative solutions, and a trade-in for
authentic grittiness). The basement is no longer that of Rob Tapert's family, it's now a far more generous set. Increased budget and scale does
provide you with many more opportunities, but it can also alienate fans who
have the modest blood of the original coursing through their veins.
In a brief glimpse of the interior of the cabin, with wind blowing about, I got a snifter of an Evil Dead 2 vibe ... shame about the gear-crunchingly deadpan delivery of "You're all going to die tonight". Moving outside, the exterior layout is also all there, work shed included.
FAMILIARITY: Key images from the original are all
present and correct – the shotgun (albeit a sawn-off here) – the Book of
the Dead (teasingly wrapped in black plastic and barbed wire – a
caution-filled warning that I quite like) – the time-halting clock – the
presence in the woods (looking slicker, but that ingenious sense of simple
solutions for effective visuals so frequently witnessed on Raimi's flick, feels
removed here) – and even “The Classic”, as Sam Raimi fondly considers his
famous Oldsmobile to be, makes an appearance.
Oh and those perverted old trees seem
to be back.
TWEAKS: Changing iconic images can be tricky – you
don't want to cherry-pick and stick rigidly to a well-worn path (such as the
catastrophically bad 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street), but
equally you don't want to ditch must-have moments and sights – the re-design of
the Necronomicon (seemingly flesh stitched together to resemble
a best-seller as designed by Leatherface) could prove controversial to the
most-feverish of the die-hard audience. My opinion is split on this one, but on the other hand, this in itself isn't enough to get your panties in a bunch over.
Rather than a bridge high-over a river, a flood cuts off the
merry band of young folk from the sanctuary of the mainland here. I don't think
anyone can get too uppity about this tweak.
One tweak I'm really not keen on however, is the look of the
possessions themselves. The sheer-white of the eyes in the original bore
witness to the captured being having their soul removed entirely – those white
voids staring back at us were an abyss – and that's not-to-mention their
grisly, gnarled and decayed flesh. The remake on the other hand seems to
contain the descendants of The Exorcist … I'm not keen on this look at
all. In the original they really did look, and feel, inhuman – here they just
look like someone has watched Zack Snyder's soul-less remake of Dawn of the
Dead (2004) too many times.
Finally, who is this collection of weird-looking,
grubby-faced people? A brief encounter with warped locals? A vision of horror? Hmmm...
GORE: The 1981 original wasn't lacking in any way when it came to gore. Genre fans have been thrilled by its hand-built indie
look which unleashed a torrent of horrific images – decapitations, gnawed
wrists, stabbed ankles, severed limbs still jiggling with life on a
blood-soaked floor, and so on – and by the looks of things, the 2013 remake
doesn't skimp on grue.
Bruce Campbell has said that they fully expect to bump-heads
with the MPAA (I can already smell an “unrated” DVD/Blu-Ray release coming
on) – torn cheeks, sawn-off possessed limbs, bisected tongues, gallons of
gushing gore, angered use of a chainsaw - it ain't subtle, that's for sure. Nor should it be.
However, this is also an area for concern to me – the
coverage at, and since, the New York Comic-Con seems to focus a lot on the
gore. It was an important component of the original, yes, but in combination
with the bravado and ingenuity of a truly-original vision of a new take on
horror (“the ultimate experience in gruelling terror” as video covers the
world over proudly boasted). Fears that it just becomes a blood bath could
be legitimate. While the characterisation was fairly skimpy in Raimi's flick,
the shared-experience of the actors living and working in that environment
shone through to generate a genuine sense of friendship that is hard to
manually create – how it all works, particularly Cody's script, remains to be seen.
Baited, tense breaths all round, then.
OPINION: Remakes are inherently problematic. Yes, they make
business sense, but they do prey on the insatiable curiosity of the horror
community – even crappy remakes make money simply because the fanbase for the
original is overcome with intrigue. Will it be a worthwhile endeavour that
might come close to equalling (but never bettering) the original, or
will I have ammo with which to denounce this disrespectful cash-in? Such is the
catch-22 for horror fans – with-hold your cash and suffer the curiosity, or
pay-up and cross your fingers for a movie-with-merit in a genre swamped by
dreck, but risk financially supporting a kick to the fan-balls?
There is no doubt that I will watch the remake – the
involvement of Raimi, Tapert, and Campbell alone has secured that – but the
aforementioned dilemma remains. The Hills Have Eyes 2006 and The
Crazies 2010 both, incredibly, proved to be equal to their originals – will
the re-do of The Evil Dead achieve the near-impossible and join them, or
will it prove to be a soul-less, overly-slick, re-heat that's short on fresh
ideas, which is so often the disappointing end-result of remaking a cinematic icon?
The fanboy inside me was incensed at the news of a remake
upon first hearing it, and I am still to-this-day extremely suspicious. Yes, a
remake doesn't erase the original from existence, but it does become a part of the
franchise's legacy and can often usurp the original entirely when it comes to
ill-informed movie-watchers. A stinker of a remake can easily leave an “oh
yeah, and then that happened” fug of disappointment.
I do love a good dose of splatter befalling a group of
good-looking young folk in the woods, but I need something else to go along
with it. I've already spoken of the wider reasons why I adore the original
flick, and why the remake could very well fail to capture the same vibe – that
of an intrepid band of entirely unknown filmmakers venturing out into the woods
with a camera, a dilapidated old cabin (that they themselves renovated with
their bare hands), a handful of cast and crew, and a few buckets of blood.
That merry band was Raimi, Tapert, Campbell & Co, and they created a
cinematic milestone that redefined the horror genre – a film that was deemed to
be the “Number One Video Nasty”, which nevertheless went on to inspire
filmmakers forever after. It would not be over-egging it to state that The
Evil Dead is a cultural landmark – a mass of films, music, books, art and more, has been generated in its wake. Modern remakes never possess that power – and
that's the biggest fear, and largest pitfall, when being confronted by
one.
The verdict won't be in until I've seen it for myself, so
we'll have to see, but let's be brutally honest here, the original will always
be the King, baby.
Yes, technically I'm referencing Evil Dead 2 there,
but never mind.
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