Evil Dead

This is not an image from Evil Dead, but rather a picture I found by typing "tropical beach" into Google Images.  I do not recommend viewing any part of Evil Dead.  Seriously.  Stay home and do something you enjoy.  Bake some cookies.  Play with your cat.  Go for a nice walk.  Anything but watch this appalling shit-show of a movie.  Fuck.

I like horror movies.  I do.  But this one... I'd pass if I were you.

So five young people who look like models from a JC Penney catalog go to a cabin (in the woods!) and all of them die except one or two.  I can't let you in on the exact number of survivors, not only because that would be a spoiler, but also because my boyfriend and I walked out after about an hour.

Anyway, as in Sam Raimi's original, a book bound in human flesh and written in blood summons an ancient evil.  There are one or two half-assed attempts to suggest that our intrepid, generic young Barbie and Ken dolls have personalities and back-stories (one of them is even a stoner), but these are abandoned pretty quickly in favor of a descent into nonstop, joyless torture-porn.

Ten minutes after a German Shepherd was bludgeoned to death with a claw hammer and shortly after a girl went into a filthy bathroom and sawed her left cheek off with what appeared to be a hunting knife, my boyfriend said, "I really hate this movie.  Do you want to go?" and although I was feeling the same way, I said, "I'd like to give it fifteen or twenty more minutes."  In retrospect, I think I just felt invested because we had bought some nice buttery popcorn and two big movie-sized cups of Dr. Pepper.

I don't remember or care what happened next, but ninety seconds later I was like, "yeah, fuck it, let's get out of here."

In a good horror movie, getting scared is fun.  You jump and squirm and feel a little bit of pleasant embarrassment at letting the movie get to you even though you knew going in that it was all just pretend.  This movie simply wallows in its own unpleasantness, showing in lavish detail what happens when unlikeable, interchangeable young department store mannequins get their faces mutilated, suddenly find themselves wearing novelty contact lenses, and vomit up creamy goo of varying colors and textures.  Really, honestly, I would stay home if I were you.  Or watch The Croods.  I have no idea what it's about, but it pretty much has to be better than Evil Dead.