It’s the Booze Talkin’: Could the Evil Dead remake actually be good???

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

When the EVIL DEAD remake news was announced awhile back, I don’t think there was a single soul out there who was excited for it. There were two kinds of people out there when this was announced: pissed off fans of the original movie who thought it blasphemous to remake such a horror classic, and then there were people who don’t know what EVIL DEAD is and could give two f*cks whether it was remade or not. I guess there were a third type of people, those in the very minority, who were excited about the idea of remaking one of the most influential horror movies of all time, but they all live in Hollywood and are somehow a part of the remake (director, producer, actor, writer, etc…). I instantly wrote the thing off as trash, but just this week, word around the campfire is spreading… that the EVIL DEAD remake is actually going to be good. Say whaaaaa???

Now, I’m not one to write a movie off upon its announcement, nor am I one to totally shit on something that I haven’t seen. But never, in a million years, would I think that a remake of EVIL DEAD would be good. Pointless, yes. Waste of time, money, and effort? Sure. But good? F*ck no. And yet, just this week, original EVIL DEAD collaborators (and legends of the genre) Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi have come out saying that the film is undeniably scary, gory, and good. What the hell is going on around here? The guys who made their careers off the EVIL DEAD movies are on board with the remake? And not only that, but they’re saying that, from what they’ve seen thus far, it’s a damn good time? I feel like I fell off a f*cking bridge into crazy town with this news… what the hell is going on here?

But like the professional internet “journalist” that I am, I do a bit of research and come to find out that both Raimi and Campbell are invested in the remake as they’re both producers of the new film, so of course they would never come out and say that the film is a pile of dogshit because they want—no, they need–people to go see it so they can make some of their money back and not totally flush the project down the toilet. I get that, and that’s probably why they’re coming out and saying that it’s good. But why now? It’s not like the film is coming out this week (or even this year), and if they saw it and were truly un-wowed they could have simply said nothing and no one would know the difference. The fact that they’ve come out of the woodworks to talk the damn movie up, though? Shit, maybe this movie won’t blow after all…

Director Fede Alvarez also helped write the flick (along with Raimi…) and while they’re calling it a “remake” the new film doesn’t feature Ash, but rather follows a female protagonist into the woods where the Book of the Dead is unleashed upon them. Campbell has come out numerous times saying that it’s not going to be the same movie as there won’t be an Ash, it’s a different group of kids, and of course technology has improved immensely since the original, but…. does changing those things make it less of a remake? Or does it basically make this more like a sequel, a reboot to the franchise that has more or less stopped at part 3? And if it’s more like a sequel, does that mean we, as a horror community in love with the original, can feel ok about ourselves if it actually ends up being good? In a way, they seem to be going the DAWN OF THE DEAD route, with the same basic plot as the original but with everything else different. That’s good, right? Or… they could be going the route of THE HITCHER, which changed it’s protagonist from male to female in its remake and it totally blew assholes…