Review: Evil Dead Remake (2013)

Stars: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez

Budget: $17 million

Directed By: Fede Alvarez

Initially when I heard about a remake back in the day of this being released I was like WHY, just make a new film in the main series.
Especially after seeing Raimi back to form with drag me to hell. (but i don't like the ending to that film) Along with being not to sure about the actors and the director.
It was a loooong time in the making too it was going to be a sequel then it wasn't, then a reboot, then a psuedo reboot. It was finally settled on a total remake.

So Fede Alvarez came out of nowhere and impressed quite well with this film. especially with only a modest budget too. Raimi did oversee things but at this time was still in talks to do other superhero films after the success of his Spiderman films.
This is a total remake taking the story and only changing some base elements from the original, also adding some odd stuff too.

So instead of heading to this deserted cabin for a sexy weekend with girlfriends, the plot now follows a group of friends (and a brother) taking one of their member to the cabin to 'cold turkey' a drug addiction out of her.
Before that though we see the titular cabin a girl has been captured and is taken by cult into the basement, there she is immolated as it turns out she's a demon.
This girl is Mia she has a heroin addiction she's at the cabin a while after this happened, she's with some of her brothers friends. Her brother (David) then turns up with a few more people who 'care' for Mia too, though some are very skeptical due to past attempts at this.

While there Eric one of the friends just like the OG film finds a shotgun, the necronomicon ex mortis in the cellar. The idiot reads aloud the incantation from the book setting the evil lose in the forest, that now stalks them. Just like the original film the cabin members are either taken or hurt until they are taken over by the demonic forces.

This movie however seems to have a dual purpose as to make you wonder if it's all in Mia's head as she's going cold turkey, it does become more evident that yes it is demons but there's still that little thing of what if? you know?

Like in Evil Dead 2 with Ash, Mia is also taken over in this movie herself, the film leads you believe that her brother might be the new 'Ash' but it doesn't go that way. Mia gets snapped out of it and starts to fight the evil back. Again an allegory for her possibly beating back the addiction?
It's thoughtful and I only recently thought about all this, which leads me to the sad thing that this will probably never get a sequel now. Especially with the new Evil Dead project Raimi has placed in the Chin himself hands Bruce Campbell. Now i'm looking forwards to that tentatively as he's only directing I think and it's set in the older ED universe but won't have Ash in it.

But enough on that, so Evil Dead Remake, very strong film a sneaky little easter egg at the end too if you watch past the credits, THN awards this film a strong 4 out of 5 stars.

Review: Spiral (2021)

Stars: Chris Rock, Samuel L. Jackson

Budget: $20 million

Directed By: Darren Lynn Bousman

So a continuation of the saw franchise or a sideways step?

whatever it is, it is still in the same world a few years after the original films timeline has ended.

It has someone doing copycat killings against the police forces corrupted officers.

Chris Rock plays Dt. Zeke Banks a disliked Detective because he got a fellow police officer in trouble being dirty.

A lot of people have said Chris's acting i this is a little'off' at the beginning I agree, but there's a reason I think.

Listen to him speak he's genuinely speaking his mind about some real world problems, I both admire him for some of the things he brings up but have to say maybe a film like this wasn't the best place to do that.

His acting does improve after about the 20-30 minutes after he's gotten all his rants out.

Now I did actually enjoy this film despite that and I tell you why. it felt like a 90's action film in story and pacing but with all your modern trope and aesthetics.

I don't know if anyone felt this way but I genuinely felt like I was back in time watching an older film like a gorier lethal weapon and no this isn't because Chris in that film either, I think it was the troubled cop who doesn't want partner etc, it just all added up.

I will say it's a pretty easy to read film, I did guess the killer as soon as I saw them even with the twists and turns that are common in Saw films. Sam Jackson is as always excellent in his roll as the uncaring, or is he? Father of Zeke.

I can't go into much with this film because almost everything other than lightly touching on the story is a pretty big give away that if you watch it will give you big clues to solving the 'killer'.

It is definitely worth a worth a watch, especially if your invested in the saw franchise, plus you all know my love for franchise continuations.

So THN awards Spiral (2021) a good 3 out of 5, worth a watch if you can ignore Chris's rants.

Review: Army of the Dead (2021)

Stars: Dave Batista, Tig Notaro

Budget: $70-90 million 

Directed By: Zack Snyder

I'm confused as to where this stands in timelines, is it in the Snyder of the dead universe?
Is it the Romero universe?
Ah, suppose it's not too important really.

So yes this had been languishing in developement hell for some time. Two most prominent were Snyders losses, no one should go through that. Second of course is money/studio.

So the big old N stepped in and helped out for showing rights, as usual, oh and maybe a new Snyder of the Dead universe thrown in too.

It stars everyone's favourite cuddly ex-wrestler Dave Batista as angsty dad and troubled ex-army vet turned burger flipper Scott Ward. 
Since the outbreak in las vegas he's been estranged from his daughter Kate, who works as a care worker on the front lines with refugees from the area. Tig Notaro also stars as a plucky helicopter pilot they pick up later on. Tig is cgi cleverly inserted or new scenes put in due to the OG actor being a naughty boy.

Now the plot is pretty standard zombie movie affair, infected area has tons of cash in a safe. A shady owner of one of the casinos wants to, quote, 'send them in to retrieve it' He knows of Ward goes to him to assemble a team to retrieve $250 million, they get to keep $50 themselves to divvy up.
Sounds straight forward right, they assemble friends, the pilot, a safe cracker and an influencer to keep the film current, who specialised in killing zombies for views. Oh and shady guy throws in the most obvious mole/betrayer/asshole ever too. They've got a time limit as the areas going to be nuked too.

Now this film has brilliant ideas and goes with the evolving zombie theme again fast strong, intelligent alphas and your usual run of the mill shamblers. Kinda confusing as the initial zombie is an alpha, so maybe his bites don't turn everyone alpha right?

(i wrote a book it's on amazon undead in the valleys the welsh aftermath, it featured both kinds of zombie before anyone else thought of it, go check it out, it's amateur but good).

It's a logical yet flawed idea as later you see the first one bitten by him turns alpha. This is the problem with this film (and a lot of Snyders works) he tries to jam all this cool stuff in yet it's under developed or goes no where. There's talk of talk of these dehydrated zombies coming to life in the rain again, doesn't go nowhere. One of the friends has an amazing rotary saw he seems to care for a lot, we see in a dreamesque sequence that he uses it too.

In the real life of the movie though? Nah it's relegated to cutting a wall open when they're trapped later and never used again. there's some zombies with blue eyes, blue viscera or both. I've seen other sources saying these are robo-zombies, now this toys with the alien idea they mention at the beginning but again goes no where AND I KNOW it might be explained later on in this 'universe' but then it might not because so many other things aren't, also i shouldn't have to wait for any kind of explanation from something that might not happen.

So Ward gets his daughter to get them in, his estranged daughter has reasons to get in too, basically being a plot device to get people killed or put in danger, though they do 'make up, sort of' later, asshole guy is an asshole he's there to get an alpha zombie head that apparently worth 5x more than $250 million and also puts them in more danger as they killed an alpha when they had an 'agreement' with them, yeah watch the movie.

My last gripe is nearly everyone in this movie is unlikable, apart from maybe the safe cracker guy, but then he's fucking annoying 90% of the time. Ward and woman interest decide to split the money mostly for themselves not share it equally, rotary blade guy has a permanent chip on his shoulder. Daughter Ward makes baaaaad decisions and is a brat basically, the rest have reasons too which will become clear.

 In the end I tried ti like this and it has brilliant visuals and ideas which might be enough for some shallower viewers, but i've sat and analysed this now. It's case of sea sized ambition, but shallower than an inch in execution. THN awards Army of the Dead (2021) 2 out of 5 stars, watch if there's nothing else and you want shallow entertainment, but don't go down the rabbit hole with it's ideas that go nowhere.