Bloody, Bloody Good Time

I was promised nothing but blood, blood, and more blood when I bought a ticket to Evil Dead, and, boy, did it deliver.  The remake of the 1981 horror/comedy classic is an orgy of gore, and it definitely did not hold back. 

A group of friends head to a cabin to help their friend Mia (Jane Levy, you aren't in Suburgatory anymore, girl!) overcome her drug addiction.  Apparently, Mia has failed to do this before, so they ask Mia's brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) to come along.  They arrive at Mia and David's family cabin, and, right away, something doesn't seem right.  Mia insists that she can smell something gross in the cabin, and when they pull back a rug, they find a bloody trapdoor that leads to the basement.  Bloody.  Trapdoor.  Seriously.  Get the fuck out.  This might be the first time I wanted them to find out what was in the basement.  They find dead cats hanging from the ceiling a book wrapped in plastic and barbed wire.  I didn't know there was another Fifty Shades of Grey book out. 

Is this a first edition?!

The book is bound in human flesh and features satanic drawings that would normally result in a parent/teacher conference.  Of course some idiot is going to read from The Book of the Dead and summon forest-dwelling demons to kill everyone in the house.  Hello!  I didn't pay $10 to watch My Little Pony. 

From that point on, it's balls-to-the-wall slice-and dice.  I cannot stress that enough.  The amount of violence is ridiculous, and I don't remember the last time I saw a horror movie this bloody.  People get shot repeatedly in the face with nailguns, they cut their own faces off with mirror shards, rip their arms off, stabbed in the face with needles, raped by trees (whoa), slice their limbs with an electric turkey carvers, and the list goes on and on.  You know when you get to that point in a gross scary movie when you aren't really jumping or gagging at the gross makeup and effects anymore, but you just start laughing and squinting your way through it and occasionally release a sound of disgust ("Ooohh maaan!")?  That's what Evil Dead becomes. 

Director Fede Alvarez plays this remake very straight for 90% of the movie.  For the most part, he is going for straight up horror and not cheeky fun.  Only one person gets thrown up on.  Shucks.  It's about 15 minutes too long, but Evil Dead is absolutely relentless.  Just when you think it's about to wrap up, it revs like a rusty chainsaw and keeps going.  I sure as hell had a great time.