Evil Dead is the newest remake of a horror classic from the 1980s. The original film, directed by Sam Raimi, was a particularly nasty piece of work. The story concerns a group of young adults who gather in an isolated cabin for a weekend getaway and are attacked by demonic forces. The 1983 picture was renowned for its intensity and gore and the film features a lot of mutilation and bloodletting. But despite the violence, The Evil Dead is also a lot of fun; the moviemakers possessed a sense of humor and their film has a mischievous way about it.
The new version, directed by Fede Alvarez, is not exactly a carbon copy of the original film but it retains the tone and basic premise of Raimi’s picture. A new slate of characters face the same situation in an equivalent setting and (occasionally familiar) carnage ensues. The 2013 version retains the gore and recalls many of The Evil Dead’s signature visuals while expanding the narrative and using modern technology (via a considerably bigger budget) to update the presentation to suit the expectations of a contemporary audience.
As with many remakes, Evil Dead was met with skepticism and downright hostility from its fan base. This is understandable. The horror audience has seen many of their most beloved titles abused in half-assed productions like 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 2006’s The Omen, 2008’s Prom Night, and 2010’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. Part of the problem is that many of these films were snared by one of two traps: either the filmmakers deferred to the original picture and created a movie with all the artistic merit of a paint-by-numbers worksheet (see: Psycho) or they strayed too far and lost the essence of what made the original film special (see: The Haunting).
In his review of the new version, David Edelstein dismissed the remake as a mere cash grab. He writes:
“The magic of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead had everything to do with its time, place, and resources. It was the ne plus ultra of the late-seventies/early-eighties splatter films — only handmade, kicky, exuberant where others of its ilk were plodding. Its technique wasn’t secondary — it was the whole shebang. . . . But the passing of the torch from Raimi to Alvarez is not a momentous occasion. In the end, who really cares? Five years from now, will you want to watch this bloody $14 million extravaganza or Raimi’s shoestring original, which was Amateur Hour elevated to pop art? Evil Dead just bleeds money.”
Edelstein’s review provoked a response from Matt Singer at Indiewire, who argues that the new version is superior to the original film:
Alvarez’s “Evil Dead” certainly doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does put a fresh pair of stylish (and quickly blood-soaked) rims on this old jalopy. On a technical level, it’s light-years beyond Raimi’s version . . . The original “Evil Dead” billed itself as “the ultimate experience in grueling terror,” a title the new “Evil Dead” more than lives up to. By the end of the film, you’ve watched people carve up their own faces, shoot each other at point blank range with nail guns, and saw off their limbs (that’s right, guys: limbs plural). It’s the ultimate experience in feeling like a wrung-out sponge. If you want an “Evil Dead” movie to scare you, gross you out, and deeply unsettle you, I think you’ll be satisfied by Alvarez’s version.
These two reactions outline the perils of critiquing remakes. Edelstein is concerned with authenticity and original films are usually deemed to be more “authentic” than remakes. Raimi and company were the originators of The Evil Dead and so their film is deemed to be more authentic, and it is assumed that authenticity makes it inherently superior. This also partly explains why, as Singer points out in his article, Evil Dead II from 1987 is not considered with such hostility. The sequel—which is for all intents and purposes a remake—is often regarded as superior to the 1983 film and is a source of admiration instead of resentment. But the sequel was made by most of the same people who created the original and so it is regarded as an “authentic” remake. This would also explain why the promotional materials for the 2013 film took pains to inform the public that the new version was “from the producers of the horror classic.”
There is a charm about low budget and independent moviemaking that glossy Hollywood productions cannot replicate. This is especially true when the story of the production becomes as familiar as the movie itself. Knowing how much time and effort was spent making a film can impact the way we see it and the stories shared on commentary tracks, interviews, documentaries, and convention appearances become fused with the picture. Unfortunately, that does not necessarily make for good film criticism. A lot of people work really hard on every movie, including every horrible piece of shit you’ve ever seen. (I’m sure a lot of people worked really hard on The Host.) Knowing the behind-the- scenes story can elicit admiration or sympathy but it isn’t the job of film critics to show mercy. As critic Sam Adams recently tweeted, “It’s not that critics don’t know how hard it is to make movies. It’s that we have a responsibility not to care.”
Singer’s defense of the new Evil Dead is problematic because it ignores the role of authorship. If a writer transcribed The Great Gatsby word-for-word and then claimed it was his or her own take on the story most readers and literary critics would cry bullshit and rightfully so. That isn’t exactly what Alvarez has done with Evil Dead but it is close. One of the reasons why The Evil Dead stuck out in 1983 was its novelty. There was nothing else like it in the horror film marketplace at that time. That isn’t the case in 2013. Everything about the remake is about replicating the original film and creating a new version of it. Rather than challenging the audience or the medium, the remake of The Evil Dead is intended to recreate, mass produce, and commoditize the original picture. In other words, The Evil Dead 1983 is a piece of art but Evil Dead 2013 is an industrial product.
There is an argument to make that is that none of this really matters or at least does not matter as much as some fans and critics would have us believe. Artists rip off or retell their stories and the stories of others all the time. Books like Beau Geste, Dracula, and The Wizard of Oz were adapted into films multiple times and popular songs like “Yesterday” are constantly rerecorded by new artists. The relationship between the original version and the new version (especially when they are in the same medium) may be a relevant part of our evaluation (we don’t want to condone plagiarism, after all) but film criticism isn’t determined on a single-issue. If a movie—original, adaptation, or remake—is technically accomplished and is an interesting and entertaining piece of cinema—and the new Evil Dead is that—then at the very least the filmmakers have succeed in film making. When we purchase a movie ticket and settle into our theater seats that may be all that really matters anyway.