Re: Evil Dead IV!!!

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THR wrote:SXSW: 'Evil Dead' Rises, and the Crowd Goes Wild

Producer Bruce Campbell tells a packed Paramount Theatre at the world premiere that the graphic remake is the first in a planned trilogy -- and "Evil Dead 2" is already being written.

The gates of Hell were opened to a new generation of filmgoers in Austin on Friday, as South by Southwest hosted the world premiere of Evil Dead -- Sony's slick, shockingly graphic remake of Sam Raimi's 1981 no-budget horror masterpiece. And judging by the cheers, screams and assorted gagging sounds coming from the packed house at the Paramount Theatre, the effort was a worthwhile one.

"We're like proud uncles of this young man," said Bruce Campbell, star of the original and a producer on the remake, of director Fede Alverez. The 35-year-old Uruguayan was hand-selected by Raimi to resurrect his signature film on the strength of Alverez's 2009 short, Panic Attack!. "We're glad we got him because we won't be able to afford him much [longer]," Campbell added.

Raimi wasn't able to attend the screening, being otherwise preoccupied with the opening of a "tiny, little independent film" known as Oz the Great and Powerful, Alvarez joked.

In theaters April 5, Evil Dead stars Jane Levy (Suburgatory), Shiloh Fernandez (Red Riding Hood), Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas and Elizabeth Blackmore as the film's requisite cabin-in-the-woods bait. Like in the original, the discovery of a Book of the Dead leads to an orgy of demonic possessions and dismemberment -- plus enough blood to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. But the film's R-rating was not hard to come by, according to producer Rob Tapert.

"It really wasn't a fight to get it through," Tapert said. "That was really shocking and a blessing."

During the late-night Q&A session, Alvarez revealed that he and co-writer Rodo Sayagues have already begun work on the script for Evil Dead 2, with Campbell later adding that the team envisions the films existing as another standalone trilogy.

Campbell, a lantern-jawed fan favorite, kept the crowd in stitches with a string of off-the-cuff one-liners (at one point he described the remake as "The Big Chill with carnage and mayhem"). But most of all he wanted to dispel any notions that a remake of the beloved original was tantamount to blasphemy.

"We were a little embarrassed seeing the green garden hose shooting s--t out," he said of one particularly sloppy FX sequence from the 1981 version. "But are we going to go back like George Lucas and fix it? No."

The line drew some of the loudest cheers of the night.
THR wrote:Evil Dead: SXSW Review

AUSTIN — "Blood-drenched" barely begins to describe Fede Alvarez's remake of Evil Dead, a gore-for-broke affair that strips the flesh off Sam Raimi's cult-beloved comic-horror franchise and exposes the demons at its core. The presence of Raimi, original collaborator Rob Tapert, and star Bruce Campbell as producers should give the faithful permission to attend what would otherwise smell like a shameless exploitation of the 1981 film, but the high production values and nonstop action offered here should also please younger genre fans who've never bothered to rent it.

True to the essence of its predecessor but reinventing some particulars (precedent is set by Raimi's Evil Dead II, which practically remade the story from scratch), this film retains the five-youths-in-a-cabin premise, but renames the characters and changes some relationships to ensure we don't expect a beat-by-beat remake. That's good news for Shiloh Fernandez, who has none of the humor or panache of Campbell -- Fernandez's David fills the slot of Campbell's Ash, in that he's the brother of the first young woman to be possessed by evil forces (Jane Levy's Mia), but David is, wisely, never offered as an Ash-like hero.

And while the original had a conventional slasher-flick set-up -- a co-ed spring break trip to the woods -- this one offers more justification for the remote setting and the characters' reluctance to leave when things start to go south: Mia is a drug addict, and her brother and their friends have come to the family cabin to nurse her through a cold-turkey withdrawal. Having already steeled themselves to ignore her inevitable pleas to go home, Mia's friends at first mistake the evidence of her possession for drug-sick desperation.

Not that this misinterpretation can last for long -- what with Mia's flesh bubbling up into a scarier version of Linda Blair's Exorcist visage, and her new habit of trying to kill her pals and spouting demon-voiced promises that none will live until dawn, it's pretty clear heroin isn't her only problem. Lou Taylor Pucci's Eric, having discovered a mysterious book full of supernatural lore -- fans recognize it as the Necronomicon, bound in human skin and full of "never repeat these magic words"-type warnings, destined to be ignored -- diagnoses Mia's condition after having unwittingly (read: stupidly) set demons loose in the first place. But he's too late to keep her from biting some of their friends, allowing spirits to overtake them as well. (The distinction between zombie-style biological infection and demonic possession was always a little hazy in Raimi's series.)

Pucci is this Evil Dead's most charismatic cast member, but Alvarez and his co-writer Rodo Sayagues give him only one wisecrack in the whole film. Jokes are almost non-existent here; Alvarez comes closest to trying to make us laugh (and it works) when his camera casually shows us a prop -- a shotgun, a chainsaw -- whose importance we remember from Raimi's trilogy.

Instead he and his crack effects team work to make our stomachs turn. From the initial attack on Mia -- the infamous "tree rape" scene -- to the literal rainstorm of blood that accompanies the climax, Evil Dead delivers satisfyingly disgusting effects that serve an ever-accelerating action pace. The only respite from the gore comes in those treacherous moments when one of the possessed stops spitting threats and blood to speak in the wounded, innocent voice of the human who used to inhabit its body. The flip-flopping between "why are you hurting me?" and "I will rape your soul in Hell!" is one of the original film's gags -- like Raimi's camera, dodging trees as it offers a breakneck POV shot of demons swooping in to inhabit unwitting mortal shells -- that Alvarez executes perfectly in this unasked-for but entirely welcome remake.

Re: Evil Dead [2013]

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Review in the NY Times confirms, without elaboration, that our man Bruce has a cameo.
Last edited by TC on 07/04/13, 20:46:55, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: spoiler-i-fied for you
This is a snakeskin jacket. And for me it's a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.

Re: Evil Dead [2013]

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i blocked out the above as i wish i hadn't known that going in. maybe someone else hadn't read it yet.

so, saw this today. there are a lot of little touches that are nice nods to the original. i kept picking out things here & there. there was also indeed a lot of blood. i'll give it that. however, "scary"? no. i didn't find it at all creepy. i was hoping that, if someone is going to touch this and try to make it "darker", they had damn well better make it creepy, going the complete opposite direction of the original franchise. they did try to make it more "real" but never ticked the "creepy" box for me. the very beginning - the setup scene - eh, ok i guess. wasn't really necessary, but would have been a nice palate upon which to build a creepy film. then the whole reason that they are all at the cabin was annoying for me. granted, the clichéd reason they were at the cabin in the original was dumb too. so really, there's no good way to get them to the cabin. i accept that. but holy shit did it take forever to get going.
then really... the dead cats? i never got that. no illustration or passage they show or discuss from the book says anything about hanging dead, skinned cats. as far as i can tell, the old family (mutants? gypsys? wtf?) just liked cat jerky. and while i'm discussing the book, the movie... didn't. the book got maybe a total of two minutes of screen time. it was as far from being the focus as it could/should have been. actually focusing on the book may have helped the creepy factor, who knows. and the blonde... she just kind of vanished from the screen. what happened to her? who was the chick that rose up out of the ground? when he unburied his sister, why would no longer being possessed have healed the burn damage to her skin? why would hooking a battery up to plastic syringes have conducted electricity at all? what happened to the dog carcass? why would her arm have just ripped off when a car fell on top of it? and after everything she had just been through, she's spouting one-liners? if you're going to go for "realism" and "darker", you can't change gears at the end.
speaking of which, stay through the credits.
when you do, you'll be as baffled as i was. it ends with a line from the tape from ED2, then a profile view of bruce (seemingly in deadite form?), who turns to the camera and does his "groovy" line. uh...? what does that have to do with this at all? while i love bruce and assume he did that in an effort to endorse this film, it was really just kind of pointless and unnecessary
.

i dunno... it just never really clicked with me. i acknowledge that it would have had to have been a 20 on a scale of 10 for me to be happy about it, but it was only "ok" for me. there were some cool scenes, and probably the best horror film in a long time to be released, sure, but just kind of "eh" at the end of the day for me. could have been so much better. the material and building blocks were there.

Re: Evil Dead [2013]

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IGN wrote:Exclusive: Evil Dead Comes Home to Blu-ray
2013's horror box office smash hits stores this July.

Klaatu verata nicto! From producers Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert comes the highly anticipated home entertainment release of this year's Evil Dead, available July 16 on Blu-ray and DVD with UltraViolet from Sony Pictures.

Both the Blu-ray and DVD sets come packed with three all-new featurettes on the making of the film, character transformations and the process of re-imagining the original film. Exclusive to the Blu-ray is a cast and crew commentary track, as well as two additional featurettes exploring the origins and design of the new "Book of the Dead," and featuring behind-the-scenes footage of cast rehearsals, insights from the original creators, and more.

Based on Raimi's 1981 horror classic and directed by Fede Alvarez, Evil Dead centers on five young friends who turn a secluded cabin in the woods into a blood-splattered chamber of nightmares after awakening an ancient demon. The ensemble cast includes Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas and Elizabeth Blackmore.

Here's the complete list of special features:
  • Commentary featuring stars Jane Levy, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, Director Fede Alvarez and writer Rodo Sayagues (Blu-ray exclusive)
  • "Making Life Difficult" - The Intense and Physically Exhausting Creation of the Film
  • "Being Mia" - The Physical and Psychological Transformation into "Evil Mia"
  • "Directing The Dead" - Director Fede Alvarez re-imagines a cult horror classic
  • "Unleashing The Evil Force" - Exploring the origins and design of the new Book of the Dead (Blu-ray exclusive)
  • "Evil Dead the Reboot" - Cast Rehearsals, Bruce Campbell, Deadites and more! (Blu-ray exclusive)
that last bullet point is the reason i'll buy it.

Re: Evil Dead [2013]

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Watched it this weekend, didn't make too much of an impression on me. Like you said TC, they delivered on the gore but not really much else.
"I'm like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one. . . . I'm not a schemer. I just do things."

Re: Evil Dead [2013]

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DH wrote:Alvarez Departs Now Defunct "Evil Dead 2"?

It looks like the epic plans for the reunification of the "Evil Dead" franchise may have been scrapped.

Fede Alvarez was the helmer behind the release of the "Evil Dead" remake/reboot back in April. Around that time he had already been indicating a script for a sequel was on the way.

He later also talked about an overall plan for the franchise which would see a sequel to the reboot, "Army of Darkness 2," and then a film that would unite the two takes on the material.

Now, Alvarez and his co-writer Rodo Sayagues appear to no longer be a part of any of it. Sayagues tells Gorosito.TV (via STYD):

"Look, I am sorry to tell you this but that movie won’t happen. Evil Dead 2 is not going to happen, at least not with us involved.

We left that project many months ago because we preferred to put our energies on other things. I don’t know if the producers still have intentions of making it. But what I can tell you is that we are not part of that project."

Instead, Alvarez and Sayagues are turning their attention towards the sci-fi feature "Machina".

Re: Evil Dead [2013]

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scratch that, reverse it:
Yesterday, a report emerged quoting the reboot's co-writer Rodo Sayagues saying that both he and the reboot's director Fede Alvarez won't be back for the sequel. Alvarez has now responded, telling Bloody Disgusting that the quote was mistranslated:

"Rodo meant we’re not actually making Evil Dead 2 right now because the priority is Sam [Raimi's] Army of Darkness 2. But the plan of making a sequel to our Evil Dead is very much alive."

This would seem to indicate that "Army of Darkness 2" is definitely in development and will appear before a sequel to the reboot proceeds.

Re: Evil Dead [2013]

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watched this again last night, now the "unrated" variety. don't recall enough of the first viewing to tell you the differences off the top of my head. it was indeed gory. some great scenes. i still found the setup to take too long. but i enjoyed it more this time around. i still have the same complaints i had above, even saying some of those exact things to my wife while we were watching, but shrug. i'm more forgiving of it now, trying to view this as a stand-alone film. if you were a viewer that somehow had no idea the evil dead franchise existed and you watched this, i'm sure it would be fantastic. but how many people is that, that are going out of their way to watch a horror film? single digits?