EVIL DEAD Hails to the Kings of Horror, But Must Also Live In Their Shadows

EVIL DEAD Review:

- Way back when, Sam Raimi made THE EVIL DEAD - on a shoestring budget and with a cast of unknowns - and it was pretty awesome. The film won a cult following for its visual imagination, over-the-top gore, and harrowing cinematography. At the same time, there was a do-it-yourself quality to the film that inspired horror fans. If Raimi could do so much with so little, then maybe they, too, could create low-budget scares with a little ingenuity and imagination. Still, the low-budget cult classic seemed ripe for a remake. And it got one - EVIL DEAD 2. This second installment essentially re-told the story of the original, but in a way that heightened everything that made the original so cool. The second film took advantage of star Bruce Campbell's natural charisma and made his character, Ash, into a bonafide monster-slaying, one-liner-spouting, chainsaw-wielding action hero. Evil Dead 2 birthed the modern-day cult of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell - it took the gore of the first film to Looney Tunes extremes, and pitted a crazy-eyed Ash against all manner of nightmarish undead creatures (including an army of evil miniature Ash clones). Eventually, Raimi and Campbell made a third film - ARMY OF DARKNESS - that shifted from horror/comedy to action/comedy - making the time-displaced Ash an epic hero, leading an army of medieval warriors against an army of skeletal demons.

As I said, the original EVIL DEAD was, really, already remade by its own director and star. But now, with the film series' fandom at an all-time high - cultivated over multiple generations of fanboys and fangirls - and a new generation of Evil Dead n00bs poised to discover the franchise a-fresh, the original is once again being mined for a remake. I don't know all the backstage politics behind the remake, but ultimately, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell signed on as producers (along with original producer Robert Taipi), hired newcomer Fede Alvarez to direct, and here we are - a new Evil Dead that yes, is a reboot of sorts - but also a film with definite creative ties to the original cult classics.

Before I go further, let me just say that in and of itself, it's sort of mind-blowing that an EVIL DEAD film was #1 at the box office this past weekend. While I had slightly mixed feelings about the movie, and mixed feelings about its existence in general, if the end result is a true booster shot for the franchise that helps shine the spotlight on the originals (and maybe even lead to a true fourth film, or a crossover with this version) - then, hey - awesome!

But even just based on its own merits, I am happy for this film's box office success. After seeing the film, I can say it was deserved. While I don't think it has the same spark of holy-crap awesomeness that the originals (and for me, EVIL DEAD II, in particular) possessed, there is enough coolness, enough ingenuity, enough fun to place this new Evil Dead above most of its horror competition.

I saw Fede Alvarez speak at WonderCon in Anaheim a few weeks ago, and he made a great point. What separates Evil Dead from other horror franchises is this: Evil Dead films have a hero. This is why Army of Darkness was a natural extension of Evil Dead 2 ... Evil Dead 2 wasn't just a movie about monsters preying on people. It took the next step, and eventually became about those people - one in particular (Ash) - fighting back. The same is true of this new Evil Dead, and in that respect, it honors the spirit of the originals, and leads to a scenario in which the monsters do their damage, but then, well, they get theirs.

I have mixed feelings about Alvarez's direction. On one hand, the guy is clearly uber-talented. He does some great stuff here - and the film is positively stacked with horror-movie money shots. The guy knows how to do the sorts of big, jaw-dropping, can-you-believe-this-is-happening moments that are a trademark of the franchise. He also never fails to pay homage to Sam Raimi, utilizing Raimi's (and the series') trademark "unseen evil force zooming through the woods" shot at key moments - marking this instantly as an heir to the Evil Dead empire. To his credit, he also insists on using practical f/x for most of the film, and it really pays off - giving the gore a visceral, tangible quality that is a nice call-back to the original's home-made aesthetic. What is lacking in Alvarez's direction is a little harder to quantify. I guess I'd say it's "atmosphere." Sam Raimi is the master of creating fantastic, left-of-center worlds that have a quirky, fantastical, surreal quality to them - whether you're talking the fog-filled nightmare-scape of Evil Dead or the Marvel Comics-verse of Spiderman. This new Evil Dead ... it feels too generic, too slick, too same-y as compared to other modern horror flicks. The gore and action is there, but where was the mood, the imagination? It's funny, because during the end credits of the film, the spooky narration from the original plays, describing the Necronomicon and the mythology of the series ... and it was one of the few times when the movie felt a little less in-your-face and self-consciously gritty, and a little more creepy and atmospheric.

To that end, the other place where this movie lacks is in the imagination department. Now, it's clear the film is going more for an Evil Dead 1 vibe and less Evil Dead 2. It's not trying to be quite so cartoonish. Or is it? The movie is a bit schizo in that department. Because really, the big applause-worthy moments are all either a.) call-backs to the original, or else b.) super over-the-top moments that veer towards the comedic. But the movie *also* seems to want to be sort of gritty, sort of serious. More serious, certainly, than Evil Dead II or Army of Darkness. You get the sense though, that there's a bit of an internal battle there. After all, none other than Diablo Cody was brought in to do script punch-ups. But back to the imagination thing ... when I think of Evil Dead as a franchise, for better or worse, I think of mini-Bruce Campbell's, horrifying demons, armies of skeletons. The monsters here are never all that engaging - just your usual undead-types. It goes back to that lack of Raimi's eye for characters and creature design.

Who knows though - maybe that's what this is, in some ways - a mirror of the original franchise. Maybe this film is supposed to be mostly dark, mostly played-straight, but hint at the humorous, cartoonish possibilities that could color a second or third entry in the series. The movie's post-credits tag certainly hints at a more fun direction to come. As it stands though, I think many will debate just how "funny" this movie is supposed to be. I detected an undercurrent of dark humor throughout. But I think some might label this as a mostly "serious" take on Evil Dead. Alvarez tries to have it both ways. It works, mostly. But it also feels like a movie that - even over the course of its own running time - is struggling a bit to figure out what kind of movie it is. Even many of the film's big, gory moments are walking a very fine line between hardcore/gritty and over-the-top/funny. At times, it's almost hard to know how the movie wants us to react.

Alvarez does add a very clever twist to the story though, making it about Jane Levy's Mia, and her struggle to recover from drug addiction. In the original movies - hell, in many of these kinds of movies - the characters end up going to the proverbial cabin in the woods ... just because (a cliche that was brilliantly satirized in last year's Cabin in the Woods). But Alvarez mostly avoids making "Cabin in the Woods: The Serious Version" by using Mia's story as a metaphor and framing device. In order to overcome the demons in her head, she's got to literally battle through an army of honest-to-god demons.

Luckily, Jane Levy kills it in the film. I was already a fan from Suburgatory, but man, this film demonstrates she's got the chops to be a new horror movie icon. Levy has no easy task - she's got to play drug-addicted Mia, demon-possessed Evil Mia, and then badass horror hero in the Ash mold Mia. And she does all three with aplomb. In particular, I loved Levy's evil demon-possessed stuff - seeing the sweet-faced TV star say horrible and filthy things as she taunts and torments her friends is a lot of fun.

The other actors in the film? Much more "meh." Lou Taylor Pucci is decent as the geeky English teacher who reads "the words" from the Necronomicon and accidentally dooms his friends, but post-Cabin in the Woods, he does feel a bit like a wannabe Fran Kranz. The rest of the cast is okay, but there are no real standouts. Luckily though, MVP Jane Levy is there to carry the film. During the segments where she's out of the picture though ... there is a lot of lost momentum.

What really upped my opinion of the movie though was its balls-to-the-wall third act. Once Levy gets to let loose and kick ass, I sat up in my seat and began to smile. Alvarez said it, Evil Dead is about a hero taking on the armies of darkness. And while this new one takes its sweet time establishing its hero, the payoff is pretty damn entertaining. The film finds its gory groove towards the end, and with Levy at the helm, really takes off. I'm not saying that I don't appreciate a good slow build. Only that the middle section of the film feels a little too "dumb characters making dumb decisions," and I began to lose interest.

There is a lot to like in this new Evil Dead. It pays a ton of homage to the originals, while delivering to us a new horror hero - a damaged-but-determined girl named Mia - who makes an interesting counterpoint to the square-jawed S-Mart employee Ash. Will we get to see their universes collide one day? We can hope. And it's to this film's credit that, despite its flaws, it still left me eager for more Evil Dead, and excited about the directions that the franchise could go from here.

My Grade: B

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL: A Worthy Return to Oz?

OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL Review:

- I grew up with OZ. There was the classic film, there was the 1980's Disney pseudo-sequel, Return to Oz. But most of all, there were the books. I've talked about this a lot recently, but I grew up with the Oz books because my grandparents actually had original prints of every book in the series - the originals by L. Frank Baum, as well as the later canonical entries in the series written after his passing. The Oz books were my grandmother's most treasured items - she (along with my mom) shared a love for all things Oz, and my grandmother knew the world and mythology of Oz inside and out. She often spoke of seeing the original movie in the theaters when it was released - about how the film's transition from black and white to color was, at the time, a jaw-dropping revelation. But while I liked the film, I loved the books. Part of it was how my grandmother read them to us - with her distinct, measured reading style and her never-wavering enthusiasm for the material, she transported us to the land of Oz. But I also just loved the books in and of themselves, and the weird and whimsical style that Baum (who claimed to be transcribing actual events, as related to him by Dorothy and others) wrote them in. To me, Oz was every bit as epic and as captivating a place as the other fantasy worlds I loved - Narnia, Prydain, and Middle Earth. Sure, the film had the witches and the flying monkeys - but it was, ultimately, a musical - not the epic adventure I pictured in my mind. Where was Ozma, the Nome King, Tik Tok, and Jack Pumpkinhead? Many of the Oz series' cooler elements made it into Return to Oz, but that film saw success only as a cult classic, not as a franchise-starter. But now, in an era where Lord of the Rings and Narnia had been turned into big-budget, multi-part adventure series, I wondered if the same could finally be true for OZ. Now, the pieces were in place - Sam Raimi was at the helm, the full weight of the Disney machine was there, and Oz finally seemed poised to go big on the big screen.

The new OZ has some of the elements I was looking for in a new Oz flick. First and foremost, it's visually stunning. Sam Raimi once again proves himself to be a true wizard when it comes to creating stylized worlds and roller-coaster-like sequences that are a thrill to just sit back and let yourself get immersed in. OZ is a 100% must-see in 3D, and even better in IMAX. It looks awesome. Hyper-realized fantasy worlds and landscapes and cities, massive battles, eye-melting landscapes, visceral set-piece sequences - Raimi makes OZ into a film that practically bleeds color from the screen. He also just plain has fun with the toys at his disposal. This being Raimi, he tries every trick in the book to wow you from a visual perspective. The opening of the film is in black and white, old-school 1930's aspect ratio - but then expands and colorizes as the Wizard makes his way to Oz. The 3D sees spears hurled at the audience, and all sorts of little instances of things popping off the screen. In terms of visuals, OZ is indeed a marvel.

In terms of story, OZ is less of a marvel, and a little more by-the-numbers. The film functions as a surprisingly reverent prequel - and homage to - the original 1939 classic. In fact, the movie almost seems designed to fit into the world of the original film nearly seamlessly. I have to admit, I was sort of surprised by this. In a way, it reminded me slightly of how Superman Returns felt like an overly reverent homage to the original Donner film. So this new Oz has many moments that are designed to be crowd-pleasing call backs to the 1939 film, and many plot points that are the "secret origins," of sorts, for some of the iconic aspects of that film. Given how the overall tone of the film is so different from the 1939 film (it's not a musical, for one thing), and given that that film is from, well, 1939, I wouldn't have minded if this new movie carved its own path, and/or stuck more to the tone of L. Frank Baum. There are, certainly, moments that seek to make things feel quasi-LOTR epic. Glimpses of the sprawling world-map of Oz, gleaned from the books. Large-scale battles and mammoth flying-monkey attacks. Witch-on-Wizard showdowns. All of that stuff is great fun, which makes the callbacks to the conceits of the 1939 film feel especially quaint and out of place. Did we really need, for example, the extended black-and-white intro in which we meet regular Kansas folks who will later manifest as denizens of Oz?

There are other visual cues that feel forced. The pains taken to make this film's wicked witch resemble Margaret Hamilton's iconic portrayal in the 1939 movie seem strained, and make this new witch look unnecessarily awkward. There are a couple of other examples in this vein.

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL, for those not in the know, tells the story of how The Wizard first arrived in Oz, and how he became the great and powerful leader that Dorothy and friends eventually encounter. The Wizard (James Franco) begins the story as a huckster and a womanizer who works as a carnival illusionist. While being chased by some angry colleagues, he jumps into a hot air balloon to escape, but gets caught up in tornado that whisks him away from Kansas to Oz. In Oz, The Wizard finds a land besieged by a wicked witch, and finds that he is the long-expected and foretold-by-legend savior, destined to save the people from their oppressor (it can be debated to what extent there may or may not be an anti-feminist message here, but I didn't really find that). In conjunction with Glinda the Good Witch (Michelle Williams), as well as a slew of other companions, The Wizard must contend with the evil witch Evanora (Rachel Weisz), her conflicted sister Theadora (Mila Kunis), and, of course, their army of evil flying monkeys. How to counter the witch's magic, when The Wizard is not really a wizard, but simply a trickster? Franco attempts to use modern tricks and tech to go Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court on the wicked witches.

If any of this sounds familiar, it might be because Raimi once made a film very much in this same spirit - Army of Darkness. Of course, that film involved a time-lost, chainsaw-wielding antihero named Ash fighting off an army of the undead in medieval times ... but hey, it's all pretty similar in a lot of ways. And that's why many are calling OZ Sam Raimi's Disneyfied Army of Darkness. And you can't deny a lot of the structural similarities. What's interesting though is that Raimi, for better or for worse, infuses OZ with a lot of the same madcap, living-cartoon vibe as AoD. Even the Wizard's wise-cracking, smart-alecky dialogue seems almost lifted from the classic Raimi playbook, and from iconic cult-hero Ash. Now, it's sort of cool to see that anarchic sort of subversiveness make its way into this film. But it also never 100% works, because Raimi is clearly being pulled in multiple directions here. On one level, you sense him wanting to do a really subversive, madcap take on Oz. His version of The Wizard is even very much in the Ash mold - a blue-collar hero who thinks on his feet and makes all of the women around him (even the goddess-like Glinda) swoon helplessly (and man, it would have been fun to see Raimi partner-in-crime Bruce Campbell - who has a small cameo here - take a crack at playing The Wizard). And yet, this is also a Disney movie and a major family-friendly franchise-starter, and so Raimi can't really go full throttle. You can tell that Raimi is perhaps less interested, for example, in really building up the cute sidekick characters all that much. And so the silly good-flying-monkey voiced by Zach Braff, or the uber-cute china-doll girl voiced by Joey King, or the jive-talkin' munchkin played by Tony Cox ... they all feel sort of one-dimensional and tacked on (though I will say, China Girl is one of the most amazingly-rendered digital characters I've yet seen in a film). And some, like that aforementioned jive-talkin' munchkin, are just plain out of place in this world (you wouldn't see that in Lord of the Rings, that's for sure).

In any case, OZ is tonally a bit all-over-the-place. There's a little LOTR-style epicness, a little Raimi madcap action and insanity, a little Disney fairy-tale magic and cutesiness, a little broad humor, a little darkness. a little Tim Burton-esque weirdness and hyper-stylization (and a super Burton-esque / Nightmare Before Christmas-esque score courtesy of Danny Elfman) ... somehow it holds together and basically works, but it also feels like a movie with a lot of cooks in the kitchen - like no one was sure what, exactly, this movie was supposed to be. That also means that a lot of the movie's most interesting concepts - Chinatown, for example (a town where all of the denizens are made of breakable china) - don't feel as fleshed-out as they could be.

That unevenness also extends to the casting. Some of the casting choices here are just effortless and fit like a glove. Rachel Weisz as Evanora - basically perfect, pretty much iconic. Michelle Williams as Glinda - also completely works and feels exceedingly right. Both actresses disappear into the roles, which is what you want in a movie like this. But James Franco ... he's still pretty much James Franco. I just am not sure that Franco has it in him to play a fantasy character like this convincingly - to lose all of his Franco-ness and be someone else entirely, to be The Wizard. Franco does a pretty good job here, overall. He elicits some big laughs and, mostly, sells the sweeter parts of the film. But he just seems ill-suited to this type of role. Same goes for Mila Kunis. Kunis gives it her all as Theadora, but throughout the film, she still seems like Mila Kunis. There wasn't that timeless sort of quality that a Rachel Weisz brings to the table. Even worse, I kept hearing Meg Griffin whenever Kunis voiced her character post-CGI transformation. Kunis is great in that she has such a girl-next-door, blue-collar quality to her that many actresses don't. But that's not what you need for OZ - you need larger-than-life. And neither Franco or Kunis brings that to the production, and the movie suffers for it.

Despite these complaints, there's still a likability to this new OZ movie that's hard to deny. The visuals are so overwhelmingly awesome that it tends to drown out everything else. And when the movie hits its big, go-for-broke beats in its third act ... man, it really nails 'em. Raimi knows more than most how to hit a home run with those big, crowd-pleasing moments. But as much as OZ was a fun, theme-park ride-esque theatrical experience, I have to wonder what legs it will have as time goes on. Perhaps future entries in the revitalized Oz franchise will ultimately cement this film's place in the larger Oz cannon. And perhaps its legacy will prove to be less about this movie's lasting impression, and more about serving as a gateway to the world of Oz that L. Frank Baum created. The original 1939 film is famous for overcoming a fraught production filled with mishaps, re-starts, and dozens of creative challenges to somehow emerge as a classic. This new OZ may not end up with such a notorious backstory, but it does, more so than The Wizard of Oz and Return to Oz, feel more like the product of the Disney machine rather than a Peter Jackson-style labor of love. Raimi's visual inventiveness and subversive streak shines through, but it isn't quite enough to propel Oz to greatness. Funny, because the entire lesson of the film is that The Wizard must learn to strive less for greatness, and more for goodness. The movie seems to have had it slightly backwards in that regard. Still, there is enough goodness here to make the film worth checking out, and kids in particular will likely get caught up in Raimi's eye-popping adventure.

My Grade: B