Evil Dead Reviews
The Playlist
If the original was Raimi's inventive soufflé of horror and slapstick, in the remake Alvarez seems content to simply show us the ingredients...without knowing how to put them together into anything scary, involving or inventive.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Flix Capacitor
While first-timer Fede Alvarez provides a few effective shocks, on the whole it's more gruesome and graphic than scary or suspenseful.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Examiner.com
The whole purpose behind this remake seems to be the same one behind many horror films these days: to throw as many buckets of blood around on the screen as you possibly can.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Toledo Blade
There's no break from the intense gore and horror, no ironic wink; Evil Dead is the basic nightmare tale of five doomed individuals trapped in a cabin by an evil entity. And where's the fun in that?
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
HeyUGuys
Comparisons to the original are inevitable yet the filmmakers deserve the right for this to be judged of its own accord and it's not a terrible movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
The Ooh Tray
The result is something less than the sum of its parts; in other words, the diametric opposite of that beloved original.
ComingSoon.net
Beyond the basic plot and the return of a few of the most well-known sight gags from the first two Evil Dead films, it is generally its own animal.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6/10
Scotsman
Lacking Raimi's transgressive invention and wit, there really are some things that man should not meddle with.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Lacks the puckish cleverness of the original films, and if it stood on its own I doubt it'd spawn the same following. But it's not bad as run-of-the-mill horror goes.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Daily Film Fix
Without an appealing, charismatic lead, this remake is pretty vacant.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/10
Badass Digest
It isn't that Evil Dead is particularly bad; it's fine. But it's without much of an identity; it's never allowed to become its own movie and is constantly forced to reference or bow to or swerve from the original.
Birmingham Mail
If Hollywood is having trouble with deciding who its 'war and terror' enemies are, that's nothing compared with its crisis in horror.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
Top CriticIt's not scary. It's not shocking. It just wallows in viscera.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
You can't remake a sense of humor. Alvarez may well have one, but it'll have to wait for the next project.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Times-Picayune
It can boast of some truly extraordinary special effects, but this Evil Dead is far more gruesome than awesome.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
BET.com
In one bloody scene, the leading lady cried, 'It was so horrible! It was so horrible!' Girl, I know how you feel - that's exactly what I said when the credits rolled.
Full Review
| Original Score: D
I'm bored to death and sick to death of movies that seem to have one goal: How can we gross out the audience by torturing nearly every major character in the movie?
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Eye for Film
Evil Dead suffers the curse of its own mediocrity: while it is really not bad, it would linger longer in the viewer's mind if it were better - or indeed worse. As it is, the fun ride is over and forgotten as soon as its brisk 90 minutes have elapsed.
TV Guide's Movie Guide
This flesh-rending retread simply doesn't recapture the ferocious energy of the low-budget fright-fest that set Sam Raimi down the yellow brick road to Hollywood.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Daily Herald (IL)
Call this Evil Dead "Dead Serious," with actors who read clichés with all the conviction of a cast on a bad soap opera.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
