Evil Dead

Before I hop into the review, a little backstory:
I was too afraid to watch horror movies until I was about seventeen. And now I'm a horror junkie. It happens.
I vividly remember being about fourteen and my brother trying to convince me to watch The Evil Dead and he almost convinced me but then I chickened out.
The first time I really remember seeking out a horror movie it was because I wanted something scary to watch one almost-Halloween night. So my brother loaned me Halloween, which I watched and thought something along the lines of "That's it?! That's what I was scared to watch this whole time?" I was disappointed in it so I figured I'd dive in the deep end. The next movie I borrowed from my brother was The Evil Dead. It's the first horror movie I truly loved and it pretty much made it clear to me that, despite my real-life squeamishness, I am a gorehound.
And now they've remade it. And boy howdy is it gory.
Now, I'm really not into the whole Darker And Edgier trend that has been happening with remakes and superhero movies these days. I liked the remake of Fright Night because it was more silly than serious (I certainly hope they intended it to be silly) and I'd rather watch Batman Forever than The Dark Knight Rises. So it took me a while to get into Evil Dead simply because of its dark tone.
The plot centers on a girl, Mia, going out to her family's cabin with her brother and some friends, who are there to help her quit heroin. The situation is humorless, none of the characters are really given enough to do to make me like them (one of the friends I downright disliked) and for the first fifteen minutes or so I was starting to think maybe I wasn't going to like this one.
At some point, though I'm not sure when, it won me over. The gore probably helped but that wasn't the only factor. They kept the story interesting, for the most part the characters really seemed to be thinking about their situation and reacting like real people might. I know I often champion a lack of realism in movies, but only when the tone of the movie calls for it. And since this movie was taking itself seriously, the realism was necessary.
I actually had a problem with the fact that it referenced the originals too much, which feels a little odd to say since it is a remake. But it was also its own story and it was also bigger-budget, slicker and a bit more serious than the original (and a lot more serious than Evil Dead 2, which it also referenced) so it took me right out of the movie when the lightbulb dripped blood or someone said "Fine? [this crazy thing just happened] Does that sound fine?" or whatever. Moments like that just made me think of The Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 and I lost focus on Evil Dead in front of me.
I have a couple of other minor complaints, like the fact that the movie doesn't really make it clear what happened to one of the deadites and the character who starts reading the Book Of The Dead really has no reason to other than to get the plot rolling. That bugged me. And there's a rather huge event that happens near the end that I'm totally calling shenanigans on but if it didn't happen there wouldn't have been an epic finale so I guess I'm just going to have to accept it.
Positives about the movie? Well, I really enjoyed it. That's definitely a plus.
Like the original, there's one particular gory special effect that I couldn't stand to watch, which is always fun, and was followed by a line that, for some reason, cracked me right up (I don't know if it was really supposed to be all that funny but what are you going to do? The movie was pretty much entirely humorless, something had to cut the darkness).
The blood and gore and violence were plentiful, which I liked. And despite not really liking any of the characters, I did care what happened to them in the end.
And I think the biggest compliment I can give this movie is that I didn't spend the whole running time playing Compare To The Original, except when it made references and, thus, forced me to. But while I was watching this movie, I was watching this movie. I didn't start playing the comparison game until the drive home, which is quite a feat when you're a remake of one of my favorite movies. The Nightmare On Elm Street remake sure failed that test.
And my overall conclusion is that it's a bit unfair to play the comparison game in this movie's case. It did a good job of making itself a seperate entity. Do I like it as much as the original? No. But the original is my fifth-favorite movie of all time so that's pretty tough to live up to. This movie was entertaining and it was solid and I'm glad I saw it.
Sure there were things about it, entire characters and plot points in fact, that I just didn't like. But in the end they didn't detract from my opinion of the movie. But I still walked out of the theater feeling chipper and pleased with what I'd just watched. It held its own in the inevitable shadow of a classic. That's pretty impressive.

End of line.
-Sally