This group of friends spending a weekend in the cabin are not carbon copies, but a whole new batch of kids making some very grave mistakes.Īdding to the enjoyment, Alvarez's macabre vision can also be seen as a separate storyline from the adventures of Ash Williams that just happens to share some strange parallels. Early on we see the tan-colored, broken-down 1973 Oldsmobile still sitting by some trees rusting away, which of course also functions as a comical homage. They prefer to think of it as an unusual blend of continuation and reboot to the original trilogy, which to my mind recalls a vaguely similar tactic employed for ' Evil Dead II.' The story, which was written by Uruguayan filmmakers Fede Alvarez, making both his big-screen and American directorial debut, and Rodo Sayagues with some uncredited polishing by Diablo Cody in the dialogue, takes places thirty years after the events of the original. Interestingly, the filmmakers seem to shy away from calling this a straightforward remake in promotional interviews. Granted, a twisted and perverse sense of humor would be the required precondition for enjoying this brutally bloody version as an animated carnival ride, but in this day and age, when remakes are a never-ending trend and quickly dismissed for being such, it's a genuine treat to have at least one memorable standout worthy of the original.
The absurdity of the original is not altogether lost, however, as this new reimagining amplifies the gory violence to such an elaborately silly scale that the shock of seeing the gruesome details is more likely to garner laughs than scares. A relentless, ghastly, and jubilant phantasmagoria of nightmares, the 'Evil Dead' remake is a boisterous, outing that lives up to the cartoonish spirit of the Sam Raimi cult classic but does away with much of the humor.