Sam Raimi's horror classic The Evil Dead is the latest genre property set for the remake treatment, and some more details on the plot have been released.
There are some remakes where you can kind of see the appeal of and others where you find yourself questioning the point. A remake of The Evil Dead isn’t an easy project to get excited over. Part of the lasting appeal of the film is that it’s quite clearly the vision of its director, and despite being a little rough around the edges, it showcases more imagination and creativity than a large percentage of horror films that have followed it in the 30 years since its release.
A synopsis for the remake has been revealed and is as follows:
“Five twenty-something friends become holed up in a remote cabin where they discover a Book of the Dead and unwittingly summon up dormant demons living in the nearby woods, which possess the youngsters in succession until only one is left intact to fight for survival.”
So it’s quite similar to the original on the surface, then. But it has been revealed that the reason for the friends visiting the remote cabin is that the lead character has organised the trip to take his sister away, to help her get over her drug addiction. Whilst there she’s inadvertently possessed, and her increasingly strange behaviour is attributed to her going crazy whilst going cold turkey, rather than being possessed by a demon.
The involvement of Sam Raimi as a co-writer here and the fact that his company, Ghost House Pictures, is producing should ensure that some of the original's charm is present. But there’ll be a huge amount of pressure on director Fede Alvarez to bring similar levels of the flair witnessed in Raimi’s brilliant original.
Diablo Cody and Rodo Sayaguess are also working on the script, with the former being an Oscar winner for her work on Juno. So it looks as though there’s going to be some aspirations for this to be a quality production. However, given that Cody’s slang heavy dialogue can prove to be grating for some audiences, this could backfire.
More on The Evil Dead remake when we get it.
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