Two stars. Rating: R, for profanity, strong bloody violence and relentless gore
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.5.13
Teaser posters for Evil Dead insist that it’s “the most terrifying film you will ever experience.”
Bold words, and an audacious
claim.
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| When their attempt at do-it-yourself drug rehab goes awry, our gaggle of nitwits — from left, David (Shiloh Fernandez), Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) — can't understand how their off-camera patient, Mia, suddenly seems able to contort her face and body in decidedly inhuman ways. As the saying goes, characters this clueless deserve whatever awaits them ... which, in each case, ain't pretty. |
And complete nonsense, as well.
This pallid remake isn’t the slightest bit scary. It is, instead, little more
than a gross, predictable and thoroughly derivative splatter-fest in a horror
sub-category that needs to be retired, for at least a decade, in the wake of
last year’s vastly superior The Cabin in the Woods.
It’s hard to believe that the
idiots populating this storyline — five clueless twentysomethings who obviously
don’t share a single brain cell between them — were co-concocted by Diablo
Cody, who won a well-deserved Academy Award for scripting 2007’s smart, sassy
and savvy Juno.
Then again, Cody similarly
insulted viewer intelligence with 2009’s Jennifer’s Body, so it would seem
she has a blind spot when it comes to well-executed horror. As in, she couldn’t
write the genre to save her career.
But getting back to that boast
about “terrifying.”
No less an authority than Stephen
King — who knows a thing or two about scary stuff — made the following astute
observation in his 1981 nonfiction book, Danse Macabre:
I recognize terror as the finest emotion, and so I will try to terrorize
the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if
I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.
It’s an important distinction. A
truly “scary” movie is one that lingers: that sends you home as a quivering
mass of goose-flesh, unwilling to turn off the lights and go to bed, unwilling
even to hide beneath the covers, for fear of what might stare back when you
finally surface to peer around the room. that's “scary.”
King may settle for gross-out,
but he always tries for genuine terror; as a longtime reader, I can attest to
this.
Far too many of today’s horror
filmmakers, in stark contrast, obviously can’t be bothered to try for anything
as noble as terror. It’s much too easy to sever limbs, spew bile and toss
buckets of blood at the camera lens. As for character development or logical
behavior, they’re obviously inconsequential distractions.
