Evil Dead (2013) - Review by The Insomniac's Cinema

Evil Dead (2013) - Review

Directed by: Fede Alvarez.
Produced by:  Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi and Robert G. Tampert.
Starring: Jane Levy, Lou Tayor Pucci, Shiloh Fernandez, Jessica Lucas and Elizabeth Blackmor

Evil Dead is a remake/reboot/continuation of the 1981 horror classic, The Evil Dead, which was directed by Sam Raimi and starred Bruce Campbell. Since almost 99% of all horror remakes suck really badly a lot of people were skeptical about this one as well, but since Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell were both producers (who were very  present in the making) of this film, there were also people (including me) that were excited for it. In the end I can honestly say that this is one of the best Horror remakes ever! However, this is very different from the original. One of the biggest complaints about it, is that it's too scary and not funny enough but something that I think people forget is that the reason The Evil Dead was funny, wasn't because it was supposed to be but because Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell had a budget so small they couldn't even afford to buy gum while filming it (true story!) Evil Dead is The Evil Dead made with the budget that Sam and Bruce never had, it's more scary because they could actually afford the effects the wanted...

Evil Dead is about a group of friends who go to stay at a cabin in the woods so that their drug addicted friend can get clean, but when one of them reads from a mysterious book something evil is released that starts to possess them one by one, the different characters have to defend against their now deadite friends and try to survive the  night… Jane Levy plays Mia, the young drug addict trying to get clean with te help of her friends Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), Olivia (Jessica Lucas), Natalie(Elizabeth Blackmore) and her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) 

The characters were pretty much what you’d expect in a horror (under-developed, boring etc.) except for Mia , who was the only interesting character and only one you really cared about. I think that most of the cast did fine acting wise but everyone made extremely dumb decisions throughout the movie (like reading a book bound with human flesh, full of scribbles like, “DON’T READ THIS” after finding it in a cellar full of dead cats hanging upside down...) 

There are some major changes in the story compared to the original (including an awesome twist in the end) like Mia’s drug addiction which is a great reason for them not wanting to leave or taking what she says or does too seriously. Something that I WISHED they never put in the movie was the opening scene. In my opinion it doesn't add anything to the story, all it does is put questions in my head like, "when did this take place?" and "who the hell are those people?" or "why did they kill all the cats?" and "whoa, what's up with that dude." The opening scene was also one of the very few scenes in which they used CGI instead of practical effects. 

Original Book of The Dead compared to the remake.

The practical effects in the movie are done really, really well! They are disgusting and creepy and will definitely make you cringe at least once. The movie isn't very scary in the typical sense but it is very tense and disturbing, even the (few that there were) jump scares were done very well. I don't know if it was just me but the first time in a long time that I watched a movie that made me feel so super tense, not scared, but tense... Roque Baños composed a fantastic and eerie score which I would easily buy. Something that made a few scenes a lot creepier to me personally was that they used a siren sound effect throughout the movie when something scary was happening and every time I heard it, I thought of David Lynch's short film Six Men Getting Sick. I was also surprised to find that there was quite a lot of foreshadowing and symbolism used, like the fact that Mia is fighting to herself, trying to get clean but she also has to fight the real demon inside of her. 

Evil Dead was a disturbing, well made and interesting retelling of the classic. To me, the biggest problem was that the characters were under-developed. The movie does differ from the original but is still scary and effective in telling The Evil Dead story. The practical and sound effects were done really well and some changes added to the story, while others could've been left out. All in all, Evil Dead is a super cool and disturbing horror movie.

Evil Dead Final Verdict:

Best Character: Mia.
Worst Character: Natalie.
Best Scene: Final Fight Scene.
Worst Scene: Opening scene.
Best Change from the Original: Mia's drug addiction and *spoiler*  the fact that Mia "became" Ash.
Worst Change from the Original: The Book of the Dead.


Rating: 7/10 GOOD!

*spoiler talk*
After Bruce's cameo in the credits I immediately thought holy shit, Mia and Bruce are gonna star side by side in Evil Dead 2! But after doing some research I found out that Sam And Bruce are planning a Army of Darkness 2 and Fede Alvarez is already busy working on Evil Dead 2! How cool is that? They said that they want to have the two movie series' to conjoin in the 7th Evil Dead movie! Nothing is completely set in stone so only time will tell!!!

*end of spoiler talk*

I Spit On Your Grave 2 (2013) - MicroReview

I Spit On Your Grave 2 (2013) - MicroReview
by Insomniac's Cinema

Director: Steve R. Monroe
Writers: Neil Elman, Thomas Fenton
Stars: Jemma Dallender, Yavor,Baharov, Joe Absolom


So if you guys don't know, I Spit On Your Grave was a 2010 remake of a 1978 rape and revenge film of the same name. Number two follows the same basic structure with different characters and settings. Both the original and remake weren't extremely popular so I have no idea why this was even made but lets jump into it!


The film follows Katie, a young model who runs in to some shady photographers, the creepiest of the brother trio becomes infatuated with her and decides to break into her house, BRUTALLY rape her and kill her neighbor. He and his brothers then take her to their home-country and keep her as a sex slave. After the family tries to kill her she escapes and then exacts revenge on each of them in very disgusting and graphic ways...

Now, I have to say that some scenes in this movie are actually quite hard to watch. There are numerous rape, torture and just plain disgusting scenes. Sadly, this is all the film has to offer, character development is almost non-existent (unless you count Katie screaming and crying as development) and you can predict the entire plot within the first 10 minutes of the film. The only twist (that I did not completely expect) was the fact the they took Katie out of New York, which made absolutely no sense at all.


The acting was fine but the characters were also very predictable You hated the bad guys and felt bad for Katie... (Something which isn't extremely hard to do, unless your just as sick as these characters.)

Something that I did find somewhat interesting was that it seemed as the film progressed the gore became more and more gore-y and horrific. I'm not sure if it was on purpose or not but it did work well to show how violent Katie became thanks to the horrible things she had to go through.


Other than that I don't have much to say. If you've seen the first one, I don't think you need to watch this and if you haven't seen any one, watch the first.


All in all, I Spit On Your Grave 2 was a big and hard-to-watch let-down which will leave a bad taste in your mouth... 

Rating: 5/10

The Future of Horror - The Insomniac's Cinema

The Future of Horror

Over the past 80 plus years in which Horror has been a popular genre, it has gone through numerous “eras” where specific aspects of the genre and what make it popular have changed. Like the all the old universal monster movies or all the slasher movies that came out during the 70s-90s... One of the most prominent changes is how brutal the gore in movies has become.

The other day I watched Hostel for the first time without cringing or feeling grossed out even once! I watched a woman’s eyeball getting severed and yellow puss spewing out of her eye-socket without is bothering me at all. I know that Hostel is a torture porn movie which isn’t necessarily supposed to scare you but I can’t help but feel that this says something about the horror genre as a whole.  If you look at any old movies (say Dracula, Psycho etc.) they were considered to be very scary when they came out but today most of us can watch them without even flinching once.  

Considering that we have become so desensitized to the horrors from the past and the present, will we also be to the future horrors?

Maybe future horror movies will become more and more realistic as technology gets better but what will happen when fake gore isn't good enough any more? I think that (in a few hundred years of course) if things get bad enough, socially and politically, we might end up supporting something like the Hunger Games, it’s not like humans have never used real violence as a form of entertainment…

Please remember this isn’t a completely serious post, but just something that I find interesting to think about.  Please tell me what you guys think and what you think the future of Horror will look like!

-The Insomniac’s Cinema