Rebekkah Turley

I'll start with the positive: Casting 8/10, Cinematography 8/10, Makeup and Effects 9/10 Negative: Acting 5/10, Writing 1/10, Directing 4/10 If you want a mindless summer gore-fest to watch casually then this is perfect because that's all it's good for. Lee Cronin's lazy, surface-level writing completely and utterly destroys every ounce of potential this film had to be great. It's like he was trying to degrade it with every other writing decision he made. Alyssa Sutherland will probably need spinal surgery after carying this entire film on her back, but even her flawless performance couldn't save this trainwreck from 1 star. Evil Dead (2013) was one of the most genuinely scary movies I've ever seen. Its use of tropes paid homage to the original films and classic horror films in general, while not making every character a worthless NPC just trying to die. This film couldn't decide if it wanted to be black comedy camp horror or to be taken seriously like the 2013 remake. It couldn't decide if it wanted to tell a story about women's struggles with maternity and family life, or about domestic abuse and the fear it breeds within a family - so it chose neither. All the pieces are there for a great story but no story is ever told. We're just watching a random family get brutalized for no reason while they all act stupid for no reason. The characters talk like a 2000's after school special about not doing drugs half the time. Literally FOUR times a character stabs the demon, they leave the weapon in them, the demon lives and attacks them with the weapon they gave it. Cheesy dialogue about the protagonist's insecurities is rendered cheap and meaningless thanks to us never getting a chance to learn about the characters or develop care for them. Every character bumbles around like a helpless idiot until the protagonist finally just snaps into having common sense at the last second for no apparent reason. The reference to The Shining? Meaningless fan service because there were no themes or stories of domestic abuse. References to earlier Evil Dead films? Meaningless again, because this film utterly failed to capture the spirit of any previous Evil Dead films. It's like Lee Cronin got high, thought "wouldn't it be messed up if a mom and her kids all got brutally tortured into a giant demonic flesh ball lol", and then slapped the Evil Dead name on it to make more money. An absolute disgrace to the genre of horror. No plot, no themes, no purpose. Just senseless violence with no artistic message or value. How Cronin ever won multiple awards is beyond me. Guess they can't all be winners.