Reviews for the new Evil Dead remake are flooding the internet, and I'm kind of bothered by them...reviews keep saying the film is incredibly "intense" and "gory".
It is not hard to gross people out or terrify them with gore and dismemberment...those are not filmmaking skills. Anyone can film somebody getting ripped limb from limb with realistic FX work. That doesn't impress me. Take David Cronenberg's early work...tons of gore, but it was the way he wove the story around it so subversively and made metaphors become physical...that is style...that is what made Cronenberg not just another gore filmmaker...he used the gore as a tool to make a statement about things...rather than just gore because it looks nasty and intense.
What worked about the original ED films was Sam Raimi's very distinct style of humor mixed with a kind of grunge aesthetic...it's what separated it from most horror movies. I keep hearing people calling this remake INTENSE...but intensity is not style. It's like Zac Snyder's annoying tendency to just dial everything up to '11' without understanding the subtlety of tone and how it affects the storytelling.
The director of this remake is Fede Alvarez. I remembering seeing Alvarez's short 'Panic Attack', and it was stuff just happening without any distinct filmmaking style or tone being laid down...it was just "OMG GIANT ROBOTS!" I feel like people are missing the point these days and just marveling at anything INTENSE, as if that makes a good movie. I feel like Alvarez realized he needed to make a big impression with his first feature and the easiest way to do that is dial everything up to '11' and go even further...it guarantees a reaction.
As George Lucas said, "If you want me to make you feel something, that's not hard. I'll choke a kitten in front of you, and you'll feel something".
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