"Your little sister's being raped in hell!"
Ah, so she must be watching the reboot of the Evil Dead series. Do you remember the original The Evil Dead movie? No, I don't mean the third movie, Army of Darkness. I mean the original. It was not very good; I don't know how it got two sequels. That third one, however, was where the magic happened.
This movie is an actual attempt to recreate the first, and it is not great. Hackney lines like the one that started this review fill this movie. It works out to be a standard horror movie with the hope that you've never seen one before, as it doesn't bring anything new to the genre. Hell, if they'd have redone the third one, they could have at least given us some decent entertainment. But there's no Ash here.
One of the movie posters is covered with praise about how great the movie is - how earth-shattering, how astonishing, how it's near-perfect! What the hell were these people smoking? This movie is a good update to a bad movie. As a result, it's just not worth watching. They used the same basic stoyline with better effects and generally better acting (although, can you really improve on Bruce Campbell?).
What's the scariest sound you can think of? What would cause you to fear something deep down in the pit of your stomach? The familiar Jaws two-note theme? The shrill violins from Psycho? How about an air raid siren? Yup, every freaking time they want to scare you, they use one of those old-style crank air raid sirens. It's intrusive and not at all effective.
One overriding question is how these people managed to have a portal to hell in the basement of their cabin all these years without knowing anything about it. The book, which had clearly been there for ages, was untouched by human hands right underneath the living room. Oh, and there were all those decaying animals that I'm sure wouldn't smell.
I admit that I came here with expectations based on the original, but I also came with expectations based on other horror movies. They were all just better than this. And they didn't have to be all that good to do it.
The directing was not great.
The acting was passable.
The editing was a bit jarring.
Camerawork was actually pretty good.
Special effects were okay, but they didn't exactly break new ground.
The story was not worth retelling.
1.5/5