Original Theatrical Release Date: September 2 , 2011 Director: Alex Gregory, Peter Huyck
Eric (Jason Sudeikis) and his group of thirty-year-old friends have parties all summer at his dad’s house in the Hamptons. However, when his dad decides to sell the place, Eric proposes the party to end all parties…an orgy. The longtime friends must then decide if they’re up for potentially ruining their existing friendships in the process.
There are a few funny folks in this flick, but the story seemed disjointed and I was never quite sure where it was headed. That could have been a good thing because they didn’t seem to follow some of the same conventions these type of films tend to hold, but there was just no focus.
Sudeikis has never been one of my favorites, and I think he could probably be good in the right role but he (and none of the actors, really) reached out and tried to grab the audience. On top of that, the chemistry between all these friends seemed sparse and mostly artificial. There were a couple of moments where I chuckled to myself but I found no real guffaws.
Worth a view the first time around? Sure. A second viewing? Nah, probably not. There’s not much to quote from this film.
Original Theatrical Release: April 5, 2013 Director: Fede Alvarez
Five friends travel to a remote cabin in the woods to help one among them, Mia (Jane Levy) overcome her addiction to drugs, figuring that being away from the city will enable her to purge her system. With the help of her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) she thinks that she’ll pull through this time. However, one of the friends, Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), discovers a book and unwittingly unleashes a supernatural horror upon them all. Will any of them survive?
When I first heard that there was going to be an Evil Dead reboot, I was pretty angry. You don’t just go and mess around with the Evil Dead. C’mon, now.
However, when I heard that Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell were not only endorsing the film, but also producing, I was a little more accepting. THEN, when I saw the trailer…I was excited.
First off, don’t make the mistake of going to a movie theater that lets you order food while you watch the movie, because that’s what I did and let me tell you right now…it was really hard to use the ketchup and eat my rare hamburger with all the blood flying around on screen.
At times, it looked like Mr. Kool-Aid burst through the wall, yelling “OOHHHHH YEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH” but he was full of blood instead of Kool-Aid and exploded everywhere.
A little bit of the movie is far-fetched, but as with all horror movies, this happens. If it were “realistic” there would be no supernatural horror, according to logic. There has to be a suspension of disbelief when folks are cutting their own limbs off.
As far as the casting goes, I think most of the actors did their jobs well. Some parts seemed TOO superfluous, and in my opinion, I would have cut out about five minutes of the movie at the beginning (though it opens with a great camera angle very reminiscent of Kubrick’s The Shining).
Overall, I think this was a good update to the original, although I will prefer to think of it as a separate entity from the original Evil Dead film. Go see it if you’re a horror fan or even if you think you might hate it. It could surprise you.
About the only thing the film lacked was likable characters. I didn’t mind most of them, but some I didn’t care about and even the main characters weren’t really as exciting as Ash was in the original Evil Dead series. We’ll have to see if they work on that with a sequel (if they make one) but as it stood, I felt that most of them were annoying and frustrating.
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