Things I should be doing: A Review for Evil Dead (2013)

So let me start this out by saying that, no, I am not a huge fan of the Evil Dead franchise.

...Get back here.

Yeah I know. Those are totally not the first words you want to hear someone say when they review a remake of a 'classic' horror movie. (I refuse to call anything filmed in 1980 and after a 'classic' horror movie. Classic Horror is Hammer, Vincent Price, and Universal monsters. This is contemporary.) It's one of my downfalls, I'm sure you'll think. How can I give a proper review when I'm not even a true fan of Raimi's vision?

Chill out. I'm the perfect person to review it. And I'll tell you why.

I'm not attached to the original in any way. Those of you that are up in arms, pitchforks at the ready, are probably the worst people to review this movie. You're going to go into it thinking it's not going to be as good as your beloved original. NOTHING CAN LIVE UP TO YOUR STANDARDS! OMG THEY USED SOME CGI TO POLISH THINGS OFF WHEN THEY SAID THEY WOULDN'T AT ALL!

And I say, this is probably the horror movie that Sam Raimi would have made had he had the resources and the money. And you probably wouldn't look at it the same way.

The original Evil Dead is a landmark in the fact that it shows what you can do with a very small cast (reusing a few actors a number of times), a limited budget, and a camera on some 2 x 4s. Yes, it's groundbreaking in that respect. Bow down to Raimi and his big chinned companion, Bruce Campbell.

BUT. The remake does something very right: it doesn't give you the same characters. Sure, the cabin is probably the same one (and kind of looks like the one from Cabin in the Woods, no? Put those two movies together and that's one helluva mindfuck), and you'll see a very familiar car parked in front of it. And yes, there's an evil skin-bound book. But honestly, that's where the big similarities end.

There is no Ash. No Cheryl. No Candarian moose (though I think that's Evil Dead 2). And these are all good things. If you're so damned opposed to a remake, you can honestly think of it as an almost sequel. I mean, I did read somewhere that they're working on perhaps jamming the two together? (I heard this on wikipedia, so my source is tentative at best. Damn you wiki.) So it's not supposed to be frame by frame, and the special effects are not supposed to be oatmeal and stop motion.

I'm going to do my best not to spoil this, but HOLY GOD it was gory. Like, almost too unsettling gory. The posession makeup is as good as any I've seen before, but didn't make it so I couldn't watch (Exorcist I'm still looking at you for that title. Dammit.), and still creeped me the hell out later.

The blood. Was. Everywhere. It literally rained blood. And that's not a spoiler, you all know it happened. The tree scene that everyone is all up in arms about in different places for different reasons was there, and it was even more cringeworthy (though some girl getting stabbed in the ladyparts with a branch like she was in the original... ouch. I dunno. I think I'd rather be a victim of the second one. Less splinters.)

If I had to complain, it would be about the writing. The characters are not fleshed out enough, and sometimes you just don't.. really care. And the dialogue was not all that great. But honestly, the script was polished up by Diablo Cody, so is it really any wonder?

All in all, it's very much a movie I would watch again. I would add it to my collection, and take it out to watch with friends. I'm really very much considering a Cabin in the Woods double feature with it now, just thinking about the undertones. Wow. I blew my own mind.

Random crap and a movie review.

So you guys, if you're even seeing this, are very... patient? I mean, I always go "Okay I have to post something"... and I never do, because I either forget what I'm going to say, or what I say comes out really dumb.

Such is life, I guess.

The fact of the matter is, and I've probably said this before, if you type in "Hypnocil" into google, this blog is number 5 on the results page. This means I MUST. MUST. MUST. I must do something.

So I'm going to do a short review! Recently, I rented the movie Sinister. If you haven't watched it yet, I apologize if I give any spoilers.

(Here's where I was going to put an image of the movie poster, but looking up sinister gives me images from the movie that already creeped me out. Yeah thanks, next I'm totally going to look up "Exorcist makeup" and cry. Nope.)

So, basically, the movie is about a family that moves into the house where a weird murder takes place. The movie actually STARTS with footage of the murder, which was 4 family members hanged from a tree in their backyard, execution style, filmed with a Super 8. That's not a spoiler. That's how the movie begins. Watch the first few minutes of this movie and turn it off and walk away. Dare ya. You can't. It's just too... unnerving.

What happens IN the movie, more in depth, is a tale about demons and cult sacrifices, and a writer who wants to make a name of himself by investigating this murder. Yeah, btw, the guy got his 15 minutes of fame by opening up a murder case that was long since closed and giving more insight on it. So he's kind of a jerk, a big drinker, you know, what every single writer in media seems to be.

I mean granted, Stephen King was all of those things and more when he started out, but that doesn't mean we all are. Now where's the fucking bourbon? (If you get that reference, congratulations, you're obviously in the right place)

So I saw this movie with my father (who I try to see most horror movies with. It goes like this, when I was younger he'd take me to see Disney movies when they first came out, and as I started to get older and into the scary stuff, we started making that our tradition.), and I was kind of meh on it. Like, I could understand why the writer wrote this after having a nightmare based on the movie The Ring, especially when it came to the supernatural parts, but I wasn't all that impressed.

Fast forward a week later. I took said movie to the best friend's house, and a group of us girls watched it together. Maybe it was the fact that I'd had a little bit to drink, or that I was with a bunch of girls, or I kept FORGETTING the jump scares (there are a couple, and they caught me by surprise the SECOND TIME I watched it), but I did not want to leave her house and take that long drive home. And when I did, a black and white mailbox sent shivers up my spine and scared the absolute shit out of me.

Yes, I thought, and still kind of do, that the demon itself is very much a pedo in a mask (look it up if you want to see that spoiler), even though they say he is in fact a demon. And yes, that movie would have benefit by having maybe 9 more lights on at all time. Shit was DARK, and I don't mean in theme. I mean in you can't see a damn thing on the screen. But all in all, it gave me a good creep, and the Super 8 movies are crazy. Very unsettling. I'm sure had I seen the first one, the one that played at the beginning, I might have just packed my family up and moved the fuck out ASAP.

Though honestly, if I found a box of home movies in my attic, I wouldn't watch them. I learned from The Ring that you do not watch something if you are not ABSOLUTELY sure what it is. Because it will be a cursed video tape and kill you.

But Sinister did a good job. I applaud it for it's efforts. The end. Hopefully more to come (more in the blogverse, not a sequel to Sinister)