THE STORY: A group of friends bring a girl (Jane Levy) to a remote cabin to detox her from drug addiction. She has recently OD'ed and they feel extreme measures are needed. However, they find bodies in the basement and one of them reads from a strange book and soon they are being possessed by a horrible demon who tries to kill them and collect their souls.
WAS IS GOOD?
Sort of. If you are a fan of the original then, well, this doesn't measure up. At all. And I'll talk about why in a minute. If you haven't seen the original twenty times and used the phrase "Groovy" as your ringtone then there is a lot to like. The basic idea of a group of friends trying to detox a girl who becomes possessed is interesting, and there are some nice twists and turns. The action is pretty much non-stop. The problem is that you don't care. There are no relationships and there's no real build up to anything. It's the girl gets possessed and then messes up he friends, pretty much one-by-one, killing them off. the movies makes an interesting turn when the girl is cured by her brother and now she becomes the target of the demons, but while it has a cool "what will happen now" effect, there's no real emotion or sense to it. And it builds to a big dramatic ending that is simply solved with a chainsaw.
Now compare that to the original, which slowly builds for the first ten minutes, allowing you to meet the characters and see them interact. Next the demons are invoked. Now one girl becomes possessed, but instead of just inflicting violence, the demon wants to possess the people and terrorize them, turning their friends against them and taunting them. In this movie there is some of that, but it just never lands. The demon isn't trying to terrorize, but simply to kill and it isn't nearly as interesting. Seeing people get picked off one-by-one (let me go visit the demon girl and hey, look, I got attacked) isn't as interesting as a group in a room together trying to protect each other. There is also the odd switch of the girl at first being the antagonist (once she is possessed) and then becoming the hero at the end. It was an interesting choice, but I can't say I was really hoping for her to win. It goes back to the original concept of a group of friends trying to get a girl to detox. It is he friends that are the protagonists and they are the ones we bond with. Switching to the girl as the protagonist at the end breaks the concept. If the idea had been a girl trying to detox is attacked by demons and has to save herself, then it would have been fine, but in general when you switch concepts in the 3rd act, you are going to lose a lot of mojo. And this movie felt over with 15 minutes to go.
Another thing to mention is that there is a lot of gore in this movie. The idea of people cutting off their own limbs is a recurring thing. (And you thought that was the sort of thing you only needed to see once? Ha!) It got to the point where it felt like most of the brainstorming was about what gruesome effects they could do, because they go for the gross out a lot!
All in all, while this was an interesting movie, it didn't have that "Evil Dead" feel. Worth a rental though. Hopefully next time they will concentrate on story and character more and less on gore.
** RENTAL **
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