April 5th marked the ninth anniversary of the release of director Fede Alvarez’s take on Evil Dead (watch it HERE), and Alvarez has been celebrating on Twitter by giving fans a look behind-the-scenes. First he posted video of a batch of Polaroid pictures he took during filming, then video of an alternative ending that producer Sam Raimi advised him to change. Plus he shared a section from the first draft of the screenplay he wrote with Rodo Sayagues that would have brought the life of heroine Mia (played by Jane Levy) to a very messy end.
Alvarez’s Evil Dead has the following synopsis:
Mia (Jane Levy), a drug addict, is determined to kick the habit. To that end, she asks her brother, David (Shiloh Fernandez), his girlfriend, Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) and their friends Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) to accompany her to their family’s remote forest cabin to help her through withdrawal. Eric finds a mysterious Book of the Dead at the cabin and reads aloud from it, awakening an ancient demon. All hell breaks loose when the malevolent entity possesses Mia.
Note that if you put the first letters of the characters’ names in the right order, you get the word DEMON. David, Eric, Mia, Olivia, Natalie. Yes, Alvarez and Sayagues did that on purpose.
Evil Dead franchise creator Sam Raimi produced the 2013 film alongside his fellow Evil Dead rights holders Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell. Raimi also handpicked Alvarez for the job of rebooting the property after seeing a short film Alvarez directed called Ataque de Pánico! You can watch that short at the bottom of this article.
Are you a fan of the 2013 Evil Dead, and what do you think of the alternative ending that would have killed off Mia? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.