The Evil Dead remake and why it sucked

The Evil Dead remake sucked.
There. I said it.

I did not find it "utterly and astoundingly awesome." I was not "absolutely blown away" by it. I do not consider it a "near perfect experience." I don't care that Raimi and Campbell gave it their seal of approval. It was poorly written crap and just another in a long line of overhyped remakes trying desperately to recapture the glory days of horror.

Look, the only reason that the 70s and 80s were the "glory days of horror" is because they didn't know it was the glory days, weren't trying to recapture anything and weren't working with an assembly line mindset. You cannot recapture something that was never really captured to begin with. True grindhouse classics never set out to be grindhouse, or classics. They earn that honor retrospectively, at the point when people look back and say: "Hey they really did the best they could with the little they had and their hard work and love shows through in every frame.

And yet recently, when I put forth this opinion publicly, the angry rebuttal I received from one horror fan in particular was not something I'd expected. In a nutshell, he agreed with me that the Evil Dead remake was not great, but as it was the best we're going to get in the multiplex cinemas, and wasn't as crappy as it could have been, we should be thankful that it exists at all because - in his opinion - there aren't any truly good horror movies to be found anywhere anymore, and there never will be again. Period.

I gotta tell you, this depressed the shit out of me. Seriously, I haven't been this depressed since being forced to finish my brussels sprouts as a child because "starving children in China would be happy to have that." Is this what we have become? A herd of horror fans grateful for the few scraps of lukewarm leftovers thrown to us from the Hollywood banquet tables? They're telling you it's filet mignon, I'm telling you it's shit on a shingle. Who are you going to believe? The pig-bellied fat cats lining their pockets with your ticket money, or the girl who rents, watches and reviews this shit weekly, purely for the love of the genre and the belief that the glory days of horror are not over? I'm not getting paid to do this. I've been watching horror movies since I was old enough to understand what a horror movie was, and I shall continue to watch horror movies until senility eats away the contents of my skull. I've never lied about a crappy film and I never will. I have no reason to. I'm too old to play pussyfoot and if I never again receive another free screener from Lionsgate, I'm pretty sure that my fucking heart will go on.

My advice? Tear yourself away from the Cineplex Titty and find sustenance on your own in any one of the thousand or so original indie horror movies that are being made by people who genuinely love their chosen medium. Midnight Son, The Pact, Absentia, Scalene, Some Guy Who Kills People, The Bunny Game and Beyond The Grave to name just a few. If you can't be fucked to get up off your lazy ass and do a little digging in the horror film basement for these hidden gems, then you deserve what you get. But don't tell me that the Evil Dead remake is the high-water mark for horror. I may have to settle for some things - generic Fruit Loops, secondhand bras and not having sex with Gylve Nagell - but I refuse to accept that the Evil Dead remake is the "best we can hope for." Fuck that, and fuck you. I'm sending this bullshit burger back to the fucking kitchen and demanding a goddamned crown roast.