Evil Dead (2013) – Blu-ray + Digital

***½/****
Image A
Sound A+
Extras B+
starring
Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas
screenplay
by Fede Alvarez & Rodo Sayagues, based on the
screenplay by Sam Raimi
directed
by Fede Alvarez

click
any image to enlarge

by
Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The greatest irony
of Fede Alvarez's
otherwise laudably straightforward reboot of Sam Raimi's
Spam-in-a-cabin
classic The Evil Dead is that the moments where
it references its primogenitor
are actually the movie's weakest. I'm thinking, in particular, of
handsome young hero
David (Shiloh Fernandez) getting thrown around a wet cellar in high
Raimi
smash-zoom style, which only underscores how much the original films
drew their
tone from Bruce Campbell–and how much this new one misses him. The
danger of
casting a group of beautiful people and taking itself deadly seriously
(and jettisoning the "The," in a gesture that reads as hipster
insouciance) is that Evil Dead might
draw closer to the mainstream and farther from
its grindhouse roots. The small miracle of it, then, is that in both
its
absolute glee in finding the line of how much gore to show and then
crossing it
(a pair of glasses stop a hypodermic needle…but only for a moment)
and its
surprising efforts at locating a deeper thread in a frayed
brother/sister
relationship and the impact of drug addiction, Alvarez's film is a
solid, even
affecting genre piece that allows for an abundance of memorable money
shots. Compare
its intelligence and earnestness, its infernal energy, against
the
disrespectfulness and self-satisfaction of The Cabin in the
Woods to
see that Evil Dead is not just a taste of the old
religion, it's really
pretty great.

We gather that David is afraid in the same
way The Exorcist's Father Karras is afraid:
afraid that he's been a
bad son to a mother who died asking for him in a mental hospital;
afraid that
he's been a terrible brother to little sister Mia (Jane Levy), whom he
abandoned when things started getting rough at home. He returns as the
film
opens to find Mia perched on the rusted-out husk of Sam Raimi's '73
Olds Delta
88, behind a rotted-out cabin that Mia and their pals (a nurse, a
high-school
teacher) have chosen to hold a weekend intervention/detox party. Mia is
a
junkie, and it's revealed early on that past attempts to make
her go cold turkey have
resulted in her fleeing back to civilization. This has strengthened
their
resolve
this time around that no matter what happens, they're not letting Mia
talk her
way out of the woods. It's the first complication of many that
confuses, The
Shining-like, addiction with supernatural affliction and the
DTs with
demonic possession, making the early going particularly rough when,
after we
see what we're pretty sure is demonic shenanigans perpetrated against
Mia, we
have complete sympathy with her buddies as they doubt her. The notion
that
Mia is that most unreliable of narrators is exploited smartly by
first-timer
Alvarez–enough that a nifty reversal at the end propels Evil
Dead, with heat, to its conclusion.
Enough that a few faint comparisons to some existential themes
explored in Black Swan are fair and fascinating.

Even better, though, is the closer look at
ideas of love and accountability as our players cheerfully kill their
significant
others, yet choose to die for their sisters and brothers. There's a
conversation about the "beauty myth," as well as a certain exploitation
of the
male gaze in the mini-melodrama between the teacher (Lou Taylor Pucci)
and his
nurse girlfriend (Jessica Lucas) and indeed between David and his
sweetheart (Elizabeth Blackmore)–the two women disfiguring themselves
in front of
their partners before being
murdered by them. ("David, why are you hurting me?") Consider,
too, the events leading up to the girlfriend's death
as she descends into the unconscious, "raped" by Mia, who forces
cunnilingus before forking her tongue (an image burned into my head
by the
instantly-notorious red-band trailer) and offering her brother
fellatio, and
who will later sing David a lullaby taught them by their mother. It's
unbelievably
fertile ground, this Evil Dead, ripe for
excavation for its notions of
love, of the dangers of perpetuating ideas of female attractiveness,
and of the
brutal fallout of rape. And at the end, it's ripe for a conversation
about the difference
between the people you choose in your life and the people chosen
for you. It only helps that Evil Dead is
disgusting and fun. From a longer review
originally published here.

THE
BLU-RAY DISC
Sony brings Evil Dead ('13) to
Blu-ray in a 2.39:1, 1080p transfer with crisp detail and amazing dynamic range. The colour
palette, largely muted until the climactic bloodbath, looks rich and
earthy, and for a digital production, shot with Sony's
CineAlta (a camera typically reserved for sleek sci-fis like Oblivion
and After Earth), it feels remarkably gritty,
with the interplay of
rustic textures and inky viscera making up for the absence of grain.
While I
missed Evil Dead in theatres and found some of
the CGI-enhanced gore conspicuous (the infamous jaw-rip, for instance),
truly, it's hard to
take isssue with this image at the authoring level. Reproducing a
vivid
mix with due thunder, the accompanying 5.1 DTS HD-MA track is even
harder to
fault. The discrete soundstage is consistently exploited to the fullest
without
ever becoming abrasive, and if there's a borderline cartoonishness to
the
gross-out sound effects (indeed, the movie's violence seems a hair less
graphic on
mute), it's counterbalanced by an almost disconcerting credibility to the constant,
omnipresent rainfall, or the way the subwoofer is used to create
floor-level
effects when the action's focused on a trapdoor to the cellar.

A slew of making-of featurettes begins with
"Evil Dead: Directing the Dead" (7 mins., HD), an
introduction
to Fede Alvarez's directing style that finds the cast singing his praises for
involving them at the script stage (there is brief footage of a
table-read I
wish we saw more of) and generally fostering a sense of trust that
Alvarez took
advantage of, going so far as to abandon Shiloh Fernandez in the woods
to get him
all shook up before a take. In "Evil Dead: The
Reboot" (10
mins., HD), producer Robert Tapert claims that long-time collaborator
Sam Raimi
was the "biggest proponent" of the remake while Bruce "Ash"
Campbell was against it. Campbell then chimes in to say the trio asked
themselves, honestly, what was the likelihood that they'd ever actually do a fourth Evil
Dead together, and came to the conclusion "not very high." Much doublespeak spews
forth from the interviewees, including screenwriter Rodo Sayagues, to
rationalize the lack of an Ash counterpart in the update. For what it's
worth,
clips herein from Panic Attack, the viral short
that got Alvarez the
job, made me wonder why it wasn't included in full, the way the
inspiration for
Mama was on Mama's Blu-ray release.

"Evil Dead: Making Life
Difficult" (8 mins., HD) is about the production's physical and
psychological toll on the movie's stars. Jane Levy, at once more
childlike and
more contemplative than her alter egos tend to be, seems shattered by
the experience despite chiding herself for sounding like a self-indulgent
actor.
She speaks of discovering "limits" to her health (physical and
mental) whilst staring off into space, her face devoid of makeup, and
it's frankly as haunting as anything in Evil Dead
proper. Most of the
on-set B-roll she appears in shows an actress at the end of her tether,
barely
acknowledging Alvarez's sympathetic pleasantries as she storms past
him. In
light of this piece, the next one, "Evil Dead: Being Mia" (9
mins., HD), feels a bit like overkill. Still, I liked Levy observing the "iconic"
image of Evil Mia, wearing just a slip and covered in burns and thorns,
and
"Jane"'s ensuing video diary allows for a slightly more novel, more
personal approach to the obligatory makeup-chair segment. Lastly, "Evil
Dead: Unleashing the Evil Force" (5 mins., HD) is a
walkthrough, more
or less, of the Book of the Dead, recreated for this film with a
present-tense history layered in to commemorate modern brushes with the
havoc it creates.

There is also a
feature-length commentary–optionally subtitled–with director Alvarez,
writer
Rodo Sayagues, and actors Levy, Jessica Lucas, and Lou Taylor Pucci.
Conversation flows at a clip, and lots of peculiar details bubble to
the
surface–that a disfigured extra, for instance, really looks that way
as a
result of having survived not one but two plane crashes. Levy has this
offhand
way of saying "after I've been raped by a tree" that cracks me up
(although no one dares laugh), though I sometimes had trouble
distinguishing her
voice from Lucas's. I appreciated Alvarez's consistent trainspotting of
homages
to The Evil Dead (some aren't as obvious as
others), as well
as the impromptu referendum on whether it's believable that Pucci's
character
opens the Book of the Dead. Rounding out the disc, HiDef trailers for Olympus
Has Fallen, Breakout, Magic
Magic, Dead Man Down, The
Call, and The Last Exorcism Part II
cue up on startup and can be
individually selected from the "previews" sub-menu; a keepcase insert contains instructions for downloading an Ultraviolet copy of
the film.

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