What I'm Watching: Evil Dead (2013)

It's probably no surprise that I'm a fan of the original Evil Dead movies.

For what it is, that first movie is amazing.  But it's also terribly dated, and a little silly.  Let's be honest here, folks.

Still, it's a landmark film for the genre.  It was really only a matter of time before it got remade.  So here we are in 2013, and we get that remake, so naturally I had to see it.

The biggest problem the movie has is, trying to be an Evil Dead movie, and try and do yet another movie about a bunch of kids in a cabin that gets attacked.

This subgenre is a little tired, and I'm not sure this movie brings enough new to the game to escape the trappings.  But that said, it doesn't seem to care about any of that, and still manages to be a pretty good movie, if you don't mind seeing another movie about killer beasties clawing away at an abandoned cabin.

If you've seen the first two Evil Dead movies, you have pretty much seen this movie.  Or at least 60% of it.  The plot is almost identical, with a lot of identical occurances.  The big difference comes in why the gang is at the cabin in the first place.  Everyone has gathered there to help Mia get clean after her latest drug overdose that left her dead for a brief period of time.

This seems like some incredible lengths to go through for this, but okay, fine.  I can go along with some unbelievable stuff to get us going. And it does give the group a good reason to not immediately get the fuck out of Dodge when things get weird, since they can just brush it off as Mia having bad withdrawls.  That's a good way to deal with that, really.

Sadly, Mia is the only character to really get any time spent on her to build up a personality.  Her brother David gets some, as her brother, but the other three cast members are pretty much ciphers to varying degrees.  You really don't care much about anyone besides Mia, and a little bit of David.

This is a shame, since the first 30 minutes or so are a slow burn building up to what we all know is coming.  That time could have easily been spent building the others up a little bit more.  But since Mia is the lead character, and Jane Levy is likely the best actress in this movie, it's also not entirely unexpected this happened.

Once the shit hits that fan though, the movie does not let up.  The original movie has a reputation for being pretty damned bloody and set a standard to be matched.  The remake blows it out of the water.  Or more accurately, drowns it in all the blood this movie throws at you.  I used to say movies had almost as much blood as a Tarantino film, in recent years.  Now it shall be 'almost as much blood as the Evil Dead remake.'  This is a compliment.

I am about to get into spoilers here, so if you don't want to know how things end, turn back now.  This is stuff I wish I didn't know going in, and it was inadvertently ruined for me by the press for the movie.

They hyped up Jane Levy as the movie's new lead, it's new Ash.  I really wish they had not done this.  It became quickly apparent that nope, she was just this movie's new version of Ash's girlfriend.  She gets locked in the basement for much of the movie.  So I was disappointed on that front.  But then she escapes, she gets cleansed, and then she very quickly goes down the TRUE road to Ash-dom in the last few minutes of the film.  So the news was accurate, but it took way too long to get there, and it felt like they rushed through making her the new Ash.

If they had never said anything, and just said that Jane was cast in the film as the female lead, well, then I would have had the thrill of going through the movie and seeing her actually become this movie's Ash.  Instead, I was expecting it, NOT getting it, but then having it quickly thrown at me.

Still, she does a great job protraying Mia trying to come off her drugs, then being possessed, and she has a few minutes of badassery at the end, so it all ends up good in the end.  I just hate how they were pushing the Ash angle so much, so soon.

The infamous tree scene is still there, so that might be one reason some people might want to steer clear of this.  Also, I was a bit disappointed in the other two females being the least developed, and the quickest to be killed off.  They really were just there as nothing more than fodder for the meat grinder, which is a shame these days.

But leaving aside my expectations, the movie is decent enough.  It is a solid remake, does enough for the old fans, and enough new stuff to be it's own thing too.  It takes the solid story we are familiar with, and updates it for modern times.  It is still a little silly at times with the effects and monsters but...it's an Evil Dead movies.  Those Deadites always were a bit odd, weren't they?

I did really like it, despite it's flaws, and it is worth seeing for fans of the original.  It honours the source material and does things mostly right you would want from a remake.  Check it out!

And stay through the credits!!

J
If I learned one thing from this movie: After 30 years, people still do not realise that you do not speak Latin in front of the books.

What I'm Watching: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

With a snowstorm on the way, and one last day of 2D showings here, I rushed out to the local theatre so I could see Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.

Now, I get why this might not be a movie on a lot of people's radars.  It does look a little silly.  The trailers go for that very tongue in cheek kinda vibe, and this is definitely an updating that is a bit unique and a little out there from the norm.

But oh, if you can see this movie, you should.  It really is a lot of fun.

It's not a great movie, it has some plot holes, but it's a fun little supernatural action movie that plays in the Grimm milieu in fun ways.  I honestly wish they'd dropped MORE Grimm references, but what was there that I recognised was welcome.

The movie centers around the eponymous characters, years after their well-known survival from being eaten by a witch in a house made of candy.  They've taken up the role of witch hunters as a bit of vengeance for what happened to them.  Here we find them coming into a town plagued by witches kidnapping their children, and the plot is about them trying to figure out what's going on.

The mystery unfolds well, even if there are no major surprises here.  The twists they do offer are all pretty obvious, but presented well enough.  There's nothing wrong with a solid, classic story.

I most love that Hansel & Gretel, played by Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, are almost overly stereotypical modern day action hero characters.  But they've been dropped straight into a middle ages setting, and they have no patience at all for the bullshit that these two tones create.  It's like they took the two wildly different archetypes, slammed them together, and watched the chaos from how they just do not fit together.

The movie is cut from the same cloth as Van Helsing.  It is very much that same sort of tone and universe, but whereas VH could sometimes take itself VERY seriously, and tried to convince you that it was just that to the point of being unable to take it seriously, this movie knows its sense of humour.  It knows it is not serious, and never really tries to be, even in the more serious character driven moments.

If there's anything you liked about Van Helsing, you'll find more of the same here, but IMO presented in a much better way, with the appropriate sense of humour.

There's a lot of great deaths, some great additions to the mythos, and I love what they added to Hansel's backstory.  I won't ruin it here.

It was a lot of fun, and a great bit of popcorn entertainment for just under 90 minutes.  They got most everything they needed to right.  I knew what to expect going into this, and I wasn't disappointed.

J

What I'm Watching: Sinister

Wow.

The trailers for this movie looked AMAZING.  Some of the creepier imagery I've seen in a long time.  And they set such a great mood and idea.  I was so totally stoked for this movie.

So of course I walked out of the theatre VERY disappointed with the movie.

Sinister has some good points.  Ethan Hawke as Ellison Oswald is amazing.  He puts in one hell of a performance as a writer struggling for one more hit book, struggling to keep it together, keep his family together, and figure out the mystery he's stumbled into.

That part of the movie totally works.

Watching him try and piece things together takes up much of the movie, and that is a problem.  They really give you every inch of research he does.  And that can be a good thing, but after the entire first act, you kinda just want to see shit happen.

Much of the movie you spend time watching Ellison do nothing more than watch movies, and get drunk.  I find this almost as thrilling as I would when I'd hang out with friends and end up just watching them play video games.  This is not fun.

It's well done stuff, and there are some good moments in the research, and it is JUST interesting enough, but they really needed to do something to move the pace along.  Maybe if this wasn't marketed as a horror movie, it would be more palatable?  I'm not sure.  Maybe if it was a dark, twisted drama with a few supernatural elements, I'd be happier.

The movie also relies WAY too much on the dreaded jump scare.  Almost every good scare comes from BAM SOMETHING JUMPS AT YOU and no real tension.  Sinister builds tension but then BAM LOUD NOISE.

And when it does try to be legit scary, it just ends up being kids doing weird things that end up being more silly than scary.  I found myself wanting to laugh way more than I wanted to hide under my seat.  Which...yeah, that's failure number one on the list of things to avoid.

Kids CAN be creepy.  Watch any damned j-horror movie, or The Shining.  But here, they don't say anything, they just mug for the camera, with silly, derpy faces.  And when they try and hide from notice, they hunch over like Quasimodo and tip toe around.  I am so sorry, but no.  That's goofy.

This movie had SUCH promise, but it failed to deliver that promise.  I may give it another chance though, just for Hawke's performance, and much of the dialogue is sharp...it's just the plot and actual attempts to scare that fail miserably.  If I come at it with a different mindset, from a different angle, maybe I'll like it more.

I feel like this is the "Red Eye" debacle all over again.

Sigh.

J
Yes, it's better than Clown Hunt.