Evil Dead (2013) Review

My apologies for the delay in this review. Finishing up my first year at college ended up being pretty stressful, and settling back into home life took a bit, and while I'm still not totally settled, I'm back!

After Sadako 3D, I needed a reprieve from shitty horror movies, so I took a little trip to the theater.

Now this is more like it.

I suppose I should preface this by saying I'm of a rare breed; I'm a person who's really into movies, but isn't necessarily against remakes. Shock and horror, right? Burn the witch, etc. Everyone knows that remakes are the worst thing to ever happen to the world and totally ruin the integrity of the original because that's obviously how things work.

That mindset is terribly close-minded and petty, though. To go off on a bit of a tangent, I was raised on the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. That was the first horror series that I truly loved. I checked out the remake a while after it came out, and you know what? It was actually really good. It had problems, sure, but no more than the other movies in the series. I thought it was a refreshing take on the series despite not being too terribly different, the visual style was cool, and it remained true to the spirit of the series. I'm going to go out an another limb here and say it's a shame they didn't make any sequels, because I really liked what they were doing.

All horror aficionados can stone me now.

To get back to the topic at hand, I think remakes should be viewed with an open mind. Some can be good, some can be bad, just like original movies. Remakes like Pulse, The Wicker Man, and One Missed Call are bad. Remakes like The Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street, and now, Evil Dead are really good.

Calling Evil Dead 2013 "really good" is even kind of an injustice. This movie does exactly what it's supposed to (and what some remakes fail to do,) and that's recreating the experience of the original for a new generation. The Evil Dead (1981) was the first exposure that a lot of people had to really gory, really scary movies. Evil Dead 2013 is a hell of a lot gorier and scarier than most horror movies that are released to mainstream audiences these days. Far more important, though, is the fact that it's a lot of fun.

The setup is simple: A group of attractive 20-somethings go to a cabin in the woods, and it turns out the cabin might contain a few soul-feasting demons. These demons are released by an evil book, and all hell breaks loose. While this setup may possibly be seen as formulaic, this movie does it with such style and flair that it doesn't even matter. There aren't many movies that are as fun as this one. It takes itself seriously enough so that it doesn't fall into self-parody, but it's self-aware enough to go balls out with the gore and violence and do nothing more than put on a fantastically gory show for the audience.

Even though the movie's conventional, I wouldn't say it's predictable. With many slashers, anyone experienced with the genre can pick out the doomed characters and the survivors within minutes of the movie starting. With Evil Dead, though, it's really difficult t o tell who's going to live and who's going to die. In a slasher movie, a hint of unpredictability can make an astronomical difference.

Speaking of dying and the like, let's talk about violence and death for a minute. Such subjects are usually met with forlorn stares and sorrow, but Evil Dead handles the subject with the attitude of “Put on your party hats, we're going to have fun with blood.” The gore in this movie is incredibly shocking, slapstick, and entertaining. Most of the effects are practical, which is incredibly refreshing in a CGI age. What's more, Evil Dead's gore effects are among the best ever crafted. No, the blood isn't terribly realistic or anything, but that isn't the intent; the effects are colorful, vivid, gratuitous, and just plain fun to watch. Spraying blood, unfathomable festering wounds, it's all very over the top, and it looks great. This movie literally rains blood, and it's spectacular.

Gore isn't the only thing this movie has to show for. Everyone knows that gore doesn't make a horror movie good. While the gore is the main attraction in Evil Dead, the movie manages to create very legitimate tension, terror, and suspense. The characters aren't the most fleshed-out, but you feel legitimately scared for them. The atmosphere is foreboding and dripping with dread. The photography style, the fantastic soundtrack, and the implementation of genuine tension makes this movie very suspenseful.

For a slasher movie, the performances here are pretty damn remarkable. One shouldn't expect much going in to this kind of movie, but there are some genuinely good performances to be found inside. First mention, of course, must go to the fabulous Jane Levy, whose performance of Mia is about as good as a performance of a slasher victim/protagonist/antagonist (it's complicated) can get. Her role demands that she makes the audience feel sadness, pity, disgust, and absolute terror, and Ms. Levy seamlessly weaves all of these things into one fantastic performance.

Also great is Lou Taylor Pucci as Eric (AKA Hipster Jesus) who was easily my favorite character in the film. Eric is the one who is the catalyst for the emergence of the evil. He opens the book and, quite literally, hell breaks loose. In the scenes building up to this, Pucci creates a bitter, serious character who clearly holds on to a lot of resentment. He builds on this and shows really remarkable development throughout. This could be credited to the script, but Pucci's performance is what makes it so striking. The character comes to terms with his resentment. The regrets of unleashing the evil clearly breaks him apart inside. All of this is beautifully conveyed through Pucci's fantastic performance. The rest of the cast ranges from passable to good, but no one really sticks out as a poor actor, and in a slasher movie, that's more than a viewer can ask for.

If anything I've said in this review has piqued your curiosity, check out Evil Dead. For anyone who's into horror, it's an absolute must-watch. Balls-to-the-walls fun and excitement, spectacular effects, legitimate scares, and surprisingly good performances. Evil Dead is the best horror movie to come out so far in 2013, and it's going to be a hard one to top. I've never had more fun in a movie theater. I normally am wary of sequels, but I await the impending follow-up to this fantastic movie with bated breath.

8/10

Sadako 3D Review

Preface: This is probably more rambling than an actual "review." Nevertheless, you'll still learn my opinion the movie. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I'd like to do a Ring retrospective at some point, but that's a big project that would take me quite a while. For the sake of this review, I'll just give you a brief summary of my relationship with the Ring series.

The Ring was the movie that got me into horror. Ringu was the movie that got me into foreign cinema. The Ring cycle is one of my favorite series of books. I own all of the movies (including the more obscure Japanese sequels) and books, and I know pretty much everything there is to know about the series.

In short, it's kind of a big deal to me.

When I heard that Ring was being rebooted (based on new source material penned by the original author, no less,) I was terribly excited. I was certain that a Ring movie based on a new novel by Koji Suzuki would be excellent. The concept of 3D interested me as well. Most 3D I can take or leave, but I thought they'd be able to do some fun stuff with it in this movie.

One might say that I set myself up for disappoint, and yeah, I probably did; however, the word "disappointment" doesn't really convey my feelings for this movie. No, my feelings towards this movie are a bit more... vivid than that.

Betrayal. Disgust. Repulsion.

Absolute. Fucking. Hatred.

Before I start eviscerating this movie, I'll give you guys the basic premise of the movie. If any of the plot details are wrong, I blame shoddy subtitles, but I'm pretty certain I know all I need to know: Alright, there's this lady and her boyfriend. Lady, Akane, is a teacher. One day her students start talking about a "cursed video," and one of them soon dies afterwards. She has to track down the origin of the video because reasons. 

This brings us to the antagonist of the film. Put on your helmets, this is about to get stupid. 

So there's this guy, an internet artist. His name is Kashiwada, and he is the worst horror antagonist of all time. This guy, one day some people start trolling his site. This motivates him to not only kill himself, but record it and broadcast it on Nico Nico Douga. Oh, and also somehow embed this video with the curse of Sadako to bring death to anyone who views it.

The main antagonist of this movie is a guy who gets mad at the internet and decides to destroy the world.

Sadako 3D is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Disappointment? No, my disgust with this movie goes beyond the fact that I'm disappointed. My seething hatred toward this movie is not merely due to the fact that it pissed all over the Ring canon and legacy; that may be a part of it, but no, it goes deeper. This movie isn't simply a disgrace to the Ring series - it is a disgrace to everything that horror is about. There is no atmosphere to be found. The story is painful and the characters are unengaging and flat. The scares are cheap and telegraphed. 

The effects are among the worst I've ever seen. The effects in this movie are inexcusable; this is the biggest horror franchise in Asia, and they couldn't get enough of a budget to get effects that look better than an Asylum film? I swear on Suzuki's original novel that I'm not exaggerating. The CGI in this movie honestly looks like something The Asylum studio would have done in a weekend. This is due largely in part to the 3D effects. It's very obvious that the movie wasn't shot in 3D. No practical effects jump out at you. The only thing in this movie that exploits the 3D is the lazily-inserted CGI. Most of the 3D in this movie are random CGI moths flying around, Sadako's hair, and Sadako's hand coming out of screens. The 3D is a totally out-of-place gimmick, and looked nothing short of farcical when viewed in 2D.

What's most effective in J-horror is the atmosphere. These movies aren't supposed to be your typical "jump scare" affair. Some jump scares, sure, but mostly depending on atmosphere to creep the viewer out and make them paranoid. There is nothing "creepy" about Sadako 3D. All the scares are cheap jump scares of Sadako popping out and saying "boo," almost infallibly aided by the 3D. It's not scary, it's stupid.

The leads in this film are flat-out uninteresting. Akane and her boyfriend, Takanori Ando (the mere fact that he is in this movie absolutely blows the Ring canon apart by the way, but that's a story for another time,) are looking for the cursed video for some reason that escapes me. I don't know anything about these characters because development is entirely absent, but they're the ones we follow and eventually Takanori gets kidnapped by Sadako's hair, and Akane has to save him while he's trapped in an iPhone. She has to do that by accepting Sadako into herself because they're "the same" and the only way for Sadako's wrath to be stopped is by finding a "vessel."

This movie's stupid.

Oh, but it gets worse. There's a reason why Sadako needs Akane specifically. You see, Akane has supernatural powers. By that, I mean that she is able to scream and make glass shatter (because 3D HURR HURR) and I guess this wards off evil or something. I don't know, it doesn't make a single iota of sense. So Akane is saving people by screaming when Sadako's coming out of screens and killing them. Because she shatters the screens. Anyhow, since she and Sadako both have supernatural powers, even though the powers aren't alike in nature at all, Akane is the only one who can be used as a vessel for Sadako.

Spoilers ahead. Then the movie ends with Akane accepting Sadako and... Everything goes back to normal. Without any consequence. Seriously. I guess Sadako just wanted to be carried around in Akane's pocket for all of eternity. Whatever, it's not like the rest of the movie made sense.

Other characters? There's this one really unlikable greasy looking guy with curly hair who I guess ends up being evil? He shows up near the movie's last act out of nowhere and says some creepy things to Akane and hangs himself. So I guess he was supposed to be evil. Then there's seasoned by-the-books too-old-for-this-shit detective and his young maverick partner. They provide some of the best laughs in the movie despite being useless in the end, so I suppose that makes them the best characters.

You know how the scary, foreboding thing in Ringu was TV static? Yeah, well, in this movie, 404 Errors are our new monster.

This movie tries to make 404 Errors scary.

Moving on.

Though Kashiwada and the 404 Error are terrible antagonists, this movie's Sadako is downright insulting. First off, though I already know the answer, where did Sadako come from? Yes, that's a well-known fact in the Ring canon, but there is no way that this movie is a part of the same canon as the other movies. There's no logical explanation for why she's there or how Kashiwada even knows who Sadako is. Sadako has no character in this movie. She's just looking for a vessel. I don't know why. Everything that made Sadako scary in previous movies is gone. Sadako as a presence was terrifying in the other movies. Instead of that horrifying presence, this Sadako pulls people into TV's with her hair. No more eerily emerging from a TV and unveiling her gruesome figure. Oh and then there's roughly a thousand "failed"(?) Sadakos who turn into grasshoppers.

I promise, I couldn't make this up. The climax of the movie is Akane getting chased by hundreds of Sadako grasshopers. Whom she defeats by screaming. She's running for her life for probably a good ten or fifteen minutes, and she could have cut through all that just by screaming.

This whole movie could have been avoided if she just kept screaming.

What else can I even say? The acting's awful, the directing sucks, the cinematography is unremarkable, the plot is shamefully bad, the scares aren't scary, the music isn't good, and it offends every atom of my being. It's unintelligent and it talks down to its audience with a cheap 3D gimmick. Similar to a baby and car keys, this movie thinks that because it can dangle pretty 3D effects in front of an audience, they'll cheer. Too bad the effects that this movie hinges so desperately on are atrocious. Take away that one gimmick, and you're left with an insultingly vapid film that stains the horror genre.

No, not just the horror genre. This movie is a stain on everything that is filmmaking. 

Fuck this movie.

I can't think of a movie that has made me angrier than this. When describing bad movies, it's easy to fall into hyperbole. However, I say without any hint of exaggeration that this is the worst movie I've ever seen.

The US Blu-Ray advertises this as "The Terrifying Conclusion."

Not only is it far from terrifying, but this "conclusion" has a sequel projected to come out this August.

God help us.

Stoker (2013) Review

It's no big secret that I'm a fan of Park Chan-wook's work, and I've been waiting for this film since before it was even filmed. When I saw the first trailer, I wasn't terribly impressed. When I learned that this script was Wentworth Miller's first effort, I was concerned. When I sat down to watch the movie and got 30 minutes in and I was still rolling my eyes at the dialogue, I figured the movie would end up being nothing more than a nicely directed bad script. What more can I expect out of a movie with such winning dialogue as "Hey Stoker, or should I say STROKER now... cuz that's what I hear your mom's been doing... to your uncle." I truly believed the script would fall flat through the entirety of the movie.

To my delight, I was mistaken.

Stoker tells the story of India Stoker (played by the astonishing and gorgeous Mia Wasikowska.) On her 18th birthday, she loses her father to a tragic auto accident. At the funeral, she meets her long-lost uncle Charlie (Mathew Goode) who informs her that he's going to be living with her and her mother, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) for a while. As his stay goes on, she finds herself becoming uncomfortable in ways she has never felt before. Soon enough, people start dying.

The only problem that I had with the movie was the script, which is unfortunately kind of a big problem. The plot itself is more than sufficient once it gets moving, but it takes a while for it to get to that point. In the movie's beginning stages, it seems like a pretty standard "spooky scary relative that we never heard of pops up" story, but as it goes on, the movie adds some really original twists that finally got me invested in the plot. One of these twists was a perverse sexual element that starts to overtake the characters. I won't spoil too much because it's pretty shocking. Be prepared to be appalled.

Enough about the plot though; while it holds its own, that isn't the strength of the movie. The real strength is in Park's directing. Had this movie been made by anyone else, I'm not sure if I would have liked it. Park's inclusion, however, made the film almost brilliant. The protagonist sees the world in an interesting way, and the way Park directs the movie puts the viewer in her world. All of her senses are hypersensitive. She sees things that others can't see, hears what others can't hear. In a particularly striking scene, she drowns out the sounds of women gossiping about her dead father by putting her ear to a table and rolling an egg around, causing the shell to slowly crumble. The sounds of women discussing her deceased father are drowned out to both India and the audience by the sounds of an eggshell crackling at a deafening volume. We as viewers experience what she senses, and it's brilliantly immersive.

Speaking of India, Wasikowska's performance is disturbed, sincere, innocent, and yet surprisingly sexy at times. We feel distant from all the other characters, which perfectly encompasses how India feels. Wasikowska is a joy to watch, captivating from the first time we see her running through a field to the bloody climax and bizarre epilogue. Kidman and Goode are fantastic as well, but Wasikowska brings the real power performance to this one.

In addition to Park's ability to immerse a viewer, he also knows where to point a camera. I saw this movie in a small theater with a low-quality projector, and I was still awed by how beautiful some of the shots were. The bizarre way the camera lingers on characters, the sharpening of a bloody pencil, the gorgeous landscape shots, blood splattering on delicate flowers, it's all very well-shot. You can tell that this movie is made by a Korean director. It feels like a Korean movie. The way it's shot, the way the characters deliver dialogue, the really bizarre choices made all feel very reminiscent of something Park directed in his native country.

If a theater near you is showing this and you don't mind a bit of bloody perversion, check it out. Park has crafted a nearly brilliant film in spite of being weighed down by a script that isn't always great. Rest assured, I probably won't be checking out the next "Written by Wentworth Miller" film unless this genius is behind the camera again. I truly hope that for Park's next venture into Hollywood cinema, he's given a script worthy of his legacy. Don't let my complaints of the script deter you, it really does pick up in the second half, it simply isn't spectacular nor worthy of a director of this calibre.

Beautiful, well-made, and dripping with both innocence and perversion, Stoker manages to overcome an iffy script through its flawless direction, intimate atmosphere, and stunning performances. With such strengths outweighing the weaknesses, it's hard not to forgive this film for its faults.

8/10

(On a much sadder note, the day that I made my first post to this blog, April 4th 2013, Roger Ebert died. A huge inspiration to me. I've been interested in critiquing film for as long as I can remember. The wit that he injects into his reviews rather than a flat analysis played a huge part in the way that I write my little reviews.

This inspires me to get better at reviewing, one of the things I love to do. Mr. Ebert as a whole was an inspiring man. Publishing more reviews than ever last year, despite his illness and handicap. Thank you, Mr. Ebert.

For his sake, I hope I Spit on Your Grave doesn't exist in whatever afterlife there may be.

RIP Rogert Ebert. You mean so much to aspiring writers such as myself.)