‘Evil Dead’ Remake Red Band Trailer Is Here, & It Looks Amazing.

I’ve been a fan of Evil Dead ever since I first saw it when I was 10, and like the lot of Evil Dead fans, considered it pretty sacrilegious to even entertain the idea of a remake. That of course, goes with the caveat that some studio would cheaply acquire the rights, churn out some lamesauce snooze-fest, and call it a day. Well when times pass and all of the original creators of Evil Dead are all rallying behind the remake, have hand-picked the talent behind it, and are producing it themselves, as well as literally assuring fans it’s gonna be good, then you should take that as a sign to stop being such a cynic and get pumped for gory fun. If that wasn’t enough, the trailer has just arrived, and boy howdy is it a doozy.

If watching that trailer doesn’t reassure you that it’s going to be amazing, I don’t know what will. I’ve seen plenty of folks online react to this thing in a dozen different ways, and it’s like they’re watching a different trailer than I am. Maddeningly someone online even said that it seems “so different it might as well not even be called Evil Dead”, which confuses me more than Integral Calculus, and I don’t even know what that IS. How you could look at this movie and think it’s not Evil Dead boggles my mind, because it’s the perfect encapsulation of what a modern update of Evil Dead would and should be.

I think people forget that Evil Dead was originally meant to be the most over-the-top, bloody, gory hellride it could possibly be, where a group of teens go to a cabin, and terrible, horrible things happen to all of them, resulting in their incredibly gruesome deaths. People also seem to mash-up the idea of Evil Dead, and the character of Ash, being irreplaceable, forgetting that it wasn’t until Evil Dead 2 where Ash became “Ash”. In Evil Dead 1, he was just some no name pansy, who couldn’t even get up to save his life when a few planks of wood fell on top of him. To say that there’s no Evil Dead without Ash, is to group all of the movies together, and ignore what the spirit of EVIL DEAD is about, which is creatively shot, balls out gory death and dismemberment. It’s the Ultimate Experience In Grueling Horror, remember?

For it’s time, Evil Dead was just that. Hell, anyone who’s read If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell knows one of the working titles was Blood Flood. Blood Flood! It really only makes sense that a new version would push the boundaries of taste, and go right for shock and terror as hard as possible because audiences today are so desensitized. Of course, the movie looks like a torture porn snuff film anti-horror buzzword-of-the-day, because the original was! I think many have forgotten that the original was supposed to actually be scary, rather than the campy piece of schlocky fun it’s viewed through today’s modern eyes. If seeing this trailer doesn’t excite, shock, or disgust you, then you’re already dead man. Either that or you just don’t like good things, in which case, don’t talk to me about horror movies, or how you’re a “real Evil Dead fan”. You can go sit in the other room while I watch this trailer again.