It feels like just yesterday we we wondering why we were supporting the latest idiotic trend in movie marketing by watching a teaser for a trailer of the new Evil Dead. It was a move that makes even less sense now that, barely twenty four hours later, the actual trailer has been released.
And it looks like a gloriously violent and gory return to real horror without any post-modern, meta or comedic trappings.
The lovely Jane Levy and the always wonderful (and equally lovely) Lou Taylor Pucci co-star among a group of friends who head to a cabin in the woods for some dispensable reason only to find a nightmare involving murder, possession, mutilation and tree branch splinters in their bajangos. Director/co-writer Fede Alvarez has remade Sam Raimi‘s classic with Raimi’s blessing and hands-on involvement, and the result looks to be a hardcore horror film that immediately impresses with its tone and dedication to practical effects.
Check out the gleefully nasty redband trailer for the new Evil Dead below.
Sometimes it’s just nice to get back to the basics, you know?
The film looks to forgo the tongue in cheek angle of many recent horror entries and instead jumps straight to slicing the tongue and the cheek with a razor among other grotesque displays of blood-spurting awesomeness. Hopefully the film itself follows suit. Movies like The Cabin in the Woods (which this would make a fantastic double feature with) have their place, but it’s nice to see a horror movie return to the core guts of the genre with scares and gore taking precedence over wit and self-awareness.
Raimi’s own Evil Dead II is itself essentially a remake of the first film but with ramped up budget and zaniness, but Alvarez and crew seem intent on grounding their film in pure terror. And for that, we thank them.
Now if only someone would release a special edition of the Evil Dead films on DVD or Blu-ray…
Evil Dead opens April 12th, 2013.