So the movie starts off with the original Dr. Guy's (not sure his name lol) daughter being tied to a pole and having a ritual preformed on her because she opened the Necronomicon and after they preform the ritual it cuts to the people traveling to the cabin.
So, the new reason why people are at the cabin is because the main character's sister is a drug addict and she's wanting to quite the drug cold turkey. Now I have a few problems with this. 1. Quitting cold turkey is one of the worst ways to stop a drug addiction (depending on the drug of course. They never explicitly said what she was using (at least I don't remember) but I'm willing to not have a problem with this since it looked like she was using cocaine which seems like something that quitting cold turkey actually helps with). 2. This was just kind of stupid, I mean they go to some random cabin that hasn't been used in such a long time that it's broken down (and was used in the ritual of the opening scene). I don't know, it's just kind of a stupid reason to stay in a cabin they haven't been there in a long long time, she has tried to quite before (was she at the cabin last year too? If so why is it all messed up, and why are the not that freaked out that it was broken into and messed up? Why not change the story a little bit? Make the group drive up there because the brother and sister's mom died (she seemed to recently die in the movie anyway), and she wanted to have her ashes spread where the old cabin was (the reason the cabin was never used in this version is because nobody knew about it besides their mother), the tension between the brother and sister could still be there since the brother didn't see his mom in the hospital but now he's back for spreading her ashes, while the sister was still there (and the sister could still have a drug problem, heck she could have developed that as a way of dealing with her mom dying in the hospital). I don't know, I just really hate the premise of why they're in the cabin, and I know the director didn't want them to be in the cabin just to have fun but there are better ways of doing it than a drug addiction thing with hardly any medical supervision or anything like that.
Anyway, they go the cabin and the sister in withdrawal (Mia) says she smells something, and people chalk that up to her cocaine use, this wouldn't be so bad but they have a doctor with them who's a friend but is also supposed to be monitoring the whole situation. Well, doctor, did you know olfactory (smell hallucination aren't a symptom of cocaine? And can't you smell the dead bodies too? I know, I know I shouldn't be using logic in a movie, much less a horror movie, but still why can't people research this stuff before they do it? It doesn't take that long! (Also, I am a little biased because I really don't like the premise of why they're there, it's just stupid, what if she goes crazy? Just having a single doctor there is not a great idea).
Moving on, the group finally finds the trap door to the basement (I thought they lived in that cabin? So, why didn't they know about the basement in their own cabin?) and they go down, find the dead animals for the ritual, and they bring up the Necronomicon. The guy with long hair (Eric) opens up the Necronomicon and it unleashes the evil within (oh and rain, lots of rain). Mia goes outside to try to take her mind off of not having her drugs, and ends up seeing a woman. She freaks out and goes inside. Now people don't believe the girl because she's in withdrawal from cocaine, right? But wait a minute, it's kind of uncommon for cocaine to have hallucinations as a withdrawal symptoms, shouldn't the doctor of the group know that? I mean she is supposed to be mediating this stuff right? Seriously it's a bad idea to have a doctor in a group in a horror movie, it takes some people who are kind of nerdy and know some basic stuff out of the movie and wonder how this "doctor" got her job.
(fyi, I'm talking about these parts very briefly since this is when it starts getting good and I don't want to ruin anything for someone who is reading this even though they know it has spoilers lol)
So, because Mia is freaking out and nobody believes she saw something, what does she do? Grab her keys, jump out the window, and attempts to drive home of course! This brings up a few questions. 1. Why does the doctor ask her brother to not take his sister back if she asks him to drive him home (he has a car, and she has a car, who will drive the other car?)? 2. If Mia is scared from the girl she saw outside, why does she go outside instead of saying inside the cabin where 4 other people are?
Anyway, it's raining a lot (blocking the way out, yay for being more realistic about why the road was blocked off!) and Mia ends up seeing the girl again, so she tries to miss her and crashes. Then tree rape happens (which, like the original is the way the evil is passed). Mia ends up back at the house and there she starts to do the rituals depicted in the Necronomicon, then she turns into that one demon thing (a deadite I believe), that was in the basement of the trailer (and the original, I believe) and attacks the gang, with the shotgun and then throwing up on the doctor's face. They end up locking Deadite Mia up and stuff settles down, until the doctor ends up getting possessed, and when Eric goes to check on her, she attacks him.
Next, there's a girl I haven't talked much about... actually I haven't talked about her at all since up until now she's kind of a throw-away character which is kind of sad. But she ends up getting possessed, I'm not going to give away what she does, but it was pretty great, gotta love their throwback to the older Evil Dead movies!
After this, the brother decides it's time to stop his Deadite Mia (who is still locked in the basement), so he ends up trying to bury her alive.....
(MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD)
And it works! This actually pissed me off because it could have been awesome if Mia pretended to be ok, but then when her brother turned his back she killed him, and the reason she was actually a Deadite was because her brother had to say a prayer over her live burial. Sadly, that didn't happen. Instead Mia is fine, and it looks like it will be a happy ending so her brother goes inside and gets the keys, and gets stabbed by Eric who is now a Deadite saying that it will rain blood soon (or something like that), he then goes toward the brother but the brother shoots the shotgun at the gas cans in the cabin and boom! So, is this the end? Nope! I actually really like this, because it starts raining blood! (I'm not sure if it's because the brother is dead and the evil only needed to possess maybe kill 5 people, or if it's because the evil took over Eric and in the opening we saw that the girl was possessed with the evil so it really only needed to possess 4 more people, I'm really hoping that it was the second option because that would make it so much better, but either way I'm glad that they actually ended up with the books telling actually coming true, instead of just having a nice little ending. However it's kind of really lame how it ends).
So, it's raining blood and you think the evil demon would come to Earth right? Well, she does and it's just one girl coming up from the ground, WTF? Seriously, this is the evil doom that the book was talking about? This was the thing that we had to be scared of? It's just another human girl, what makes her scarier than any of the other Deadites we saw earlier? Anyway, now that Mia is fine (and her brother is dead) she has to fight off this Deadite, and she does that with none other than....... the chainsaw! It was pretty awesome, there were tons of practical effects and nods to the originals which were greatly appreciated. But after the single deadite died, the movie ended....
(END OF MAJOR SPOILERS)
Ok, well actually the credits started, and they actually did stuff during the credits! I love it when they do that, it actually makes me want to sit through the credits. They also had some quotes recorded from the guy who found the book of the dead (kind of like the original Evil Dead when the group played the tape player), and there's something else at the end for fans of the original! So yes definitely STAY THROUGH THE CREDITS!!!!!!!!!
************End Spoilers******************
Overall I kind of liked the movie, it had a pretty good ending and I loved how they left in many of the elements from the other evil dead movies, but used them so that it worked with the movie and that they were able to add some of their own creativity too! The acting was mostly good, and I loved that one of the characters (not sure if that was intentional or not) , I do wish the movie was more on the comedy side (although the original Evil Dead was more horror than comedy), and that they had a better reason why they were at the cabin (I still like my idea of the cabin area was where their mom wanted her ashes spread, and through her will that was how they found out about the cabin and they had to stay there because it started raining and it was late and their house was a long ways away but that's just me lol), and I wish there was no animal violence but overall I enjoyed it, gotta love all the throwbacks to the older movies while still making it accessible for new fans too! I'm also glad that the film got so much better when stuff started happening, if it didn't I don't think I'd be able to recommend this movie. Also, I love that they used practical effects, so much better than CGI! It's also a very gory film, which I don't really care much about. I mean personally I think if you only rely on gore for a horror film then it's not a horror film, it's just a gross-out film that kind of sucks. Thankfully, they did the smart thing with this movie and actually didn't rely just on gore for the horror, instead they tried to make the movie genuinely scary and then added the gore for the gore fans. Oh, and I can't comment on acting, usually I just see it as good unless I see some really bad acting and then it either is funny (which I don't mind, I mean I love Terror Toons 2, come on lol).
So, do I recommend the film? YEP, I do. I can't speak for people who haven't seen the original Evil Dead movies, but for me it was fun, I really liked all the homages to the original but the movie still being it's own thing. It was definitely a lot better than I thought it was going to be
