Evil Dead

Evil Dead is the most relentlessly physical horror film of the last twenty years, it has no jokes in it at all, and whether that is a feature depends entirely on what you wanted.

Álvarez's single good structural idea is the detox. Mia is coming off heroin at the cabin with her brother, two friends and a nurse, and they have all agreed — after a previous failed attempt — that whatever she says, however badly she begs, nobody drives her home. So when she comes back from the woods claiming something attacked her, the group has a prepared, reasonable, pre-agreed answer: she is lying because she is withdrawing. The film buys forty minutes of plot out of a premise where the characters are behaving well and are catastrophically wrong, which is a far better engine than stupidity.

The craft is impressive and almost entirely tactile. Álvarez shot on film with practical effects, almost no digital blood, and a commitment to showing the whole of each injury in one piece. The cabin is wet, dark, mould-stained and specific. Roque Baños's score is punishing. By the final act the production had used, by its own account, around seventy thousand gallons of fake blood, and it looks like it.

It is a remake that keeps the furniture and throws out the tone

Everything is here — the cabin, the cellar, the Book of the Dead, the tree assault, the chainsaw, the possessed friend taunting the survivors through a trapdoor — and all of it is played straight. Raimi's 1981 film is a cartoon with real nastiness in it; this is a nastiness with no cartoon. The film is better than its reputation among purists and worse than it thinks it is at the things the original did effortlessly, which is rhythm and fun.

The set pieces

Olivia cutting her own face off over a bathroom sink with a shard of mirror. Natalie sawing her arm off at the elbow with an electric carving knife, slowly, having already watched it start to turn. A tongue split lengthwise with a box cutter. A nail gun. The chainsaw. Each of these is given its full duration and no cutaway, which is the film's entire argument about what horror is for.

Where it fails

Nobody in it is a character. David and Eric exist to make decisions; Natalie and Olivia exist to be destroyed; and Mia works only because Jane Levy is extremely good. The dialogue is functional at best. And the rain-of-blood finale, which is the film's biggest swing, is where the budget shows most.

For the same commitment to practical cruelty with an idea behind it, Martyrs; for the same flesh-as-subject with a theology, Hellraiser; for the modern film that does this with a sense of humour, Terrifier 2.

The short answer: the Naturom Demonto requires five souls before the Taker of Souls — the Abomination — can rise in the flesh. David works out from the book's own illustrations that possession can be undone by one of three methods, and chooses burial: he buries Mia alive to stop her heart, digs her out, and restarts it with a syringe of adrenaline. The demon is expelled and Mia is herself. David then stays behind in the cabin and detonates the spilled fuel to kill the possessed Eric, dying with him. Outside, blood falls from the sky and the Abomination climbs out of the ground in Mia's own shape. She fights it, loses her right hand to a trapped car, drags a chainsaw out of the shed and cuts the thing in half up the middle. The rain stops, the sun comes up, and Mia walks away down the track. A post-credits shot has Bruce Campbell turn to camera and say one word.

What is the Book of the Dead in Evil Dead?

The Naturom Demonto, found in the cellar wrapped in black plastic bin bags and bound with barbed wire, surrounded by the burned remains of animals and a shotgun. Previous readers have scrawled warnings over its pages in pen — leave this book alone, do not read aloud, do not speak the words — and someone has tried to black out the incantations. It is a set of instructions for summoning the Taker of Souls, and it requires that the words be spoken aloud, which is why the warnings are the only thing that can prevent it.

How is possession cured in Evil Dead?

The book gives three methods: burial alive, dismemberment, and purification by fire. David chooses the first, which is the only one that leaves a person to recover. He buries Mia in the shower trench until her heart stops, exhumes her and restarts it with adrenaline straight to the chest. The demon leaves because the host has died; the body is then empty and can be reoccupied by its owner. It is a genuinely clever piece of internal logic and it is the film's best writing.

What is the Abomination?

The physical form the Taker of Souls assumes once five souls have been consumed — Olivia, Natalie, Eric, David, and the woman killed in the prologue. It rises out of the ground under a rain of blood and takes Mia's appearance, which is the film's one properly surreal image. It is destroyed by being cut in half with a chainsaw from the groin upwards.

Is Evil Dead (2013) a remake or a sequel?

Formally a remake, and the production has at various times called it both. It shares the cabin, the book, the cellar, the tree sequence and the chainsaw with the 1981 film, with no shared characters and no reference to Ash inside the film itself. The post-credits appearance by Bruce Campbell is the only link, and the later Ash vs Evil Dead series proceeded as though this film had not happened.

Does Mia survive Evil Dead?

Yes, and she is the only one. She is possessed, buried, revived, loses her right hand and kills the Abomination alone. The film gives her the final shot, walking away in daylight, which makes her the first Evil Dead protagonist to win a film without becoming a comedian about it.

Scored against the published rubric, here is what the numbers mean.

Viscera 092 is near the ceiling — only 3 works score higher. A face cut off, an arm sawn off with a kitchen appliance, a tongue split lengthwise, a nail gun used repeatedly, a chainsaw, and a sustained rain of blood.

Pace 078 is very fast — 102 works are slower, and only a handful of things we hold move like this. The second half is close to continuous.

Era bias 082 reads modern — 76 works score lower. 2013 film stock finished digitally, a contemporary sound mix, and a grade that is deliberately desaturated.

The threat at 018 is deep into the supernatural — only 14 works score lower. Every act of violence is committed by a possessed body, and the film offers no human villain.

Tone 022 is bleak — 61 works score lower. Four of five die, one of them by choice, and the survivor is maimed.

Reality anchor 040 is grounded — 26 works score lower. One cabin, one cellar, consistent rules taken from a book that is on screen.

On jump scares: a few, and the film is far more interested in making you watch than in making you flinch.