Vittra - made in 2012 - was kicked out here in the States as WITHER. I caught it on Amazon Prime here in the US and it was a fun little ride.
This is basically Sweden's EVIL DEAD take and, while it's not the EVIL DEAD, it's very entertaining and keeps things interesting and bloody. A group of friends heads to an abandoned home in the woods (far cleaner than the cabin in Evil Dead!) And, in this film it's another ancient evil up to no good - a sort of wood fairy spirit being who can take your soul just by looking into your eyes, turning you into an evil, monstrous creature.
This start of slowly, but ramp up into some rather fun, gory goings on. Sadly, the pace falters from time to time, but it's well worth sticking it out through some heavy dialogue and WTF? moments to get to more of the evil beings.
The F/X work is grand. Blood flows and awful things happen to the group as the evil is spread through some wicked bites and gross out blood spraying. Little touches here and there - like glowing, milky eyes - really set this film apart from some other Evil Dead "homage" movies I've seen since the original film came out. They are doing Evil Dead for sure, but they do the copy-cat with their own, gruesome touches.
The acting is rather good. Or, at least I think it is seeing as the film is in Swedish. It was language that came off sounding bitchy to me - not sure why. Like everything that was said had a snarky tone to it. Interesting language.
There are some great shots like the one above that really play on that "something is creeping up on you" feeling. However, there are also some moments where I was thinking, "Hmmm...the house isn't THAT big. Wouldn't the other folks hear this guy and girl struggling and growling in the room six feet away?" Those moments took me out of things for a minute, but the film isn't all that serious anyway, so I managed to let it go after a time.
All in all, WITHER was a fun ride that is well worth a viddy!
I'm trying out a new little format - a video review!
I was watching LAKE NOWHERE and was inspired to toss my hat into the video ring. However, this isn't going to be the quality all the time. I plan on giving this a shot a few more times in October with proper lighting and a better intro. I literally did this on my laptop with candle lighting and a glass of whiskey. hehehe
LAKE NOWHERE was a fun little throwback to my time as a teen watching VHS tapes with friends until the wee hours of the morning. 50 minutes of time machine goodness. The story was odd and interesting and they managed to get the classic 80s tropes in without pushing them too hard. I guess the one downside to it was that somewhere in the mix they awkwardly transitioned into a more standard horror film, dropping the 80s throwback feel a bit. Still really good, but it felt like they lost the desire to keep the gag going a bit. Hard to explain. Still a fun, worthwhile watch.
EXISTS was a tense little found footage film. I'm usually not a found footage guy, but this was really well executed and tight. It even hooked my wife in and she's not a genre fan.
I really should come up with a little nickname for my wife and her genre input. heh I'll work on a little cute name for her. :) I'm always impressed when she watches a film I'm watching, even more impressed if she truly watches - sans phone - and is interested, then wowed when she actually mentions the film the next day. EXISTS got a next day mention - a positive feeling and thought on the length and story line. It really was a grand little thrill fest with limited "WTF?!" moments carried out by characters. Enjoyed it MUCH more than Willow Creek.
Feedback is welcome! I'd love to hear what you think!
((...keeping in mind that the production quality will go way up on the next rev!))
You move into a place only to find a door in the floor...that leads to a secret dungeon?!?!?!?! Ok, who's writing the treatment? James Wan, right? :)
So....question. What would you do? Embrace the creepy underworld you are now living over - inviting friends over for whiskey and cigar gatherings or movie nights down below? Or, would you nail the door shut and hope that whatever is down there...under the bricks.....or in the walls...doesn't have enough strength to push the door open for a visit. That is, if it needs to use doors at all....
"Yesterday I moved into my studio apartment. It's in an old English
monastery conversion, dates back to the 19th century I reckon, and now
has about 30 apartments. I have a tiny room on the ground floor. Got a
great deal on the rent, and didn't realise how much value I got until I
moved in and found an area worthy of any movie-grade exploration."
The door....in the floor.
"The builders have been down here when the place was being renovated a
few years ago, but it seems completely uninhabited since. No mention in
the lease. This appears to be the only staircase to the dungeon. I'm
debating my next move. More exploration needs to be done, but it's very
scary living above it alone."
I've been doing a lot of thinking about EVIL DEAD and the more I think about it the more I like it. No...love it.
The movie had me right out of the gate. The opening scene set the whole tone for the film. We know what we're going to see - something familiar, but different enough to be interesting. Thank you. Honestly, people hate on film remakes when they are shot for shot, right? They moan and piss on about how they are just seeing the same movie redone and they hate it. However, they are doing the same with EVIL DEAD for being different from the original. "They changed things!" Yes, they did and they did it well!
We have a familiar setup - five twenty-somethings go to a cabin. However, they go for different reasons than the original film. They are trying to help their friend kick a drug habit. Interesting stuff. Just the right amount of new. Again, thank you. It was believable and interesting.
This creates additional interesting interactions and situations. The cold turkey intervention has Mia's friends thinking that she's just going through withdrawals...not fighting off demons. This was added interest to me. A little added tension. And right when people start catching on, it's too late. The shit is already connection with the fan.
Fede Alvarez, Diablo Cody and Rodo Sayagues along with Sam Raimi came up with a great new take on the script without drifting too far off the beaten path. (SEE: THE FOG remake) The gimmick about the book showing the various, nastiness we're going to see unfold was a fun change. They had Lou Taylor Pucci take on the body bashing endured by Bruce Campbell in the original. And there were no useless characters or silly plot twists that lead to silly actions.
No...this isn't CITIZEN KANE. I've heard several people talking about character development and dialog. I strongly believe that the only reason people are mentioning this for a gore filled horror fest is it's connection to the original film. It's a horror film. It's being horrific. It's not My Dinner With Andre. I wanted scares, gore and evil dead and I got 'em. And the dead were so....very evil.
We get a nasty bit of swamp assault, face slicing with a mirror shard, needles in the face and eye, an arm sliced off with a carving knife, multiple nail gun injuries and more...culminating in a chainsaw shoved into a mouth with blood spraying and raining from the sky!
Come on, Horror Fans, we should rejoice that this film not only made it out to a major release, but is topping box office charts all over the place. Huzza for horror! I understand, you love the original. You might have watched it like we did - over and over committing scenes and dialog to memory. I get it. But, that was 1981and, while fun and cool and GRAND as a film, even Sam Raimi himself remade it, really. It's not sacred. Let it go already and support good, nasty horror with some truly nasty and mean spirited bloody goodness in it.
As I've said before, when the news came that THE EVIL DEAD was going to be remade, I was wholeheartedly against it. I shook my angry fist and said my "How Dare They" statements right along with all the others.
However, when I saw the dark and nasty trailer, I was cheering and could not wait to see it. The original movie came out in 1981 and we watched it over...and over...and over again. We knew what was coming from the steering wheel being jerked out of the drivers hands in the beginning to the final frame and credit roll. But, it's been 32 years. That's a good amount of time to occupy the limelight by yourself. It was time to take another pass at this epic. And, the pass was well worth seeing.
As usual, there will be no plot spoilers here, though if you've seen the original you pretty much know the drill.
EVIL DEAD 1981
I recently re-watched EVIL DEAD and what a great film it was. Raimiand his team did a fantastic job with what they had to work with. There's a flow to things that are fun and by the book. In this case, that's a good thing. The actors (Insert "BRRRRRRUUUUUUUUCE!" chant here) hold up their end of things really well. This is a classic "old dark house" story that really helped to lock the cabin in the woods storyline into genre history.
There were some very cool things being done in the original EVIL DEAD. Crazy edit cuts, wild angles and kinetic camera work helps fuel this film's creep factor and high energy. You can tell it's a budget challenged film, but that just adds to it's charms. Raimi has a lot of fun with the camera in this film. You can see that he's trying to bring his A Game to the table and it works. The camera really becomes another character in the film.
Another refreshing aspect is that you actually care about the five cabin occupants. They are not just pawns to be used up during the course of the film. Theresa Tilly, Betsy Baker, Richard DeManincor, and Ellen Sandweiss do a fine job, but this film's true star is the horror icon Bruce Campbell. He takes so much abuse in this film that it really does become comical. He's the main recipient of most of the fake blood and gore.
I had to look up what the term FAKE SHEMP meant - they have eighteen listed in the films credits. It was an interesting little factoid that carried over into the new film as well, though possibly only in homage. "Fake Shemp" is a term that refers to the final four "Moe-Larry-Shemp"
Columbia short subjects made by the Three Stooges, completed after Shemp
Howard's death. Fake Shemps are usually actors filling in for missing
or absent actors who have left the shoot, been injured, died or whose
roles were never cast in the first place. The phrase was popularized by
the "Evil Dead" filmmakers who were only able to finish filming with the
prodigious use of Fake Shemps.
Now, part of the low budget nature of the original is that there are some rather funny cuts and scenes as well. I'm not 100% sure they were MEANT to be funny, but they play as funny and so very entertaining. People pressed up against windows during near miss car accidents, "Ash" getting helplessly stuck in not one but TWO bookcases when creatures attack him and some lines of dialog that had us rolling every time we heard them.
"Maybe it was an animal." "An animal? And ANIMAL?! HA! HA! HA! HA! That's the STUPIDEST thing I've HEARD! An ANIMAL. Jesus Christ..."
The film is genuinely creepy and scary. And the gore had us howling for more when we saw it. Blood flows in buckets and body parts fly...and wiggle...all over the place. Everything - even the crazy, stop action clay effects work - still holds up pretty well today.
As I re-watched, I was somewhat surprised at how much good stuff was in this film. It had been a while since I saw it, but as it played through I kept saying, "Oh yeah...I forgot about that part." The 85 or so minutes fly along and the movie ramps up to insane levels. There are great moments of tension and some really nasty moments that helped raise the horror genre bar to a very high level. The level has been held up to this very day as something to strive for.
I'm not sure the remake made it to the original's level, but it gave it a great go.
EVIL DEAD 2013
The original EVIL DEAD had a campy quality that came from the low budget and small group effort. That particular aspect is missing entirely from the remake, of course, but it still has an edge that separates it from the flock. Director Fede Alvarez does a fantastic job remaking the film - paying homage to the original, but not copying it scene by scene. Alvarez, Diablo Cody and Rodo Sayagues reworked Raimi's script expertly. They added a level of detail that really helped the story along. It was still the cabin in the woods classic, but the reason for them being there made sense and there were reasons why the horrors that unfolded happened the way they did. I want to examine these aspects of the film at greater length. It seemed to strike a few cords and were a metaphor for something a little bigger than the sum of it's parts.
As things devolve, the characters act like like you'd expect them to act and don't resort to silly moves and actions. The acting was above average for sure, not your run of the mill genre schlock. While the cast was solid, Jane Levy and Lou Taylor Pucci were the centerpieces and they helped to push this film beyond being just another "scary movie".
The camera work wasn't as over the top as Raimi's, but it had me thinking about it for sure. Aaron Morton's cinematography was intriguing. The shadows, light and focus pushed the film into a creepy place. Things were out of focus at times and I found myself straining against the darkness to see what was there under the surface. The tension was fantastic.
There were great callbacks to the original film. They had to be in there - everyone wants them there either to hate on them or to praise their difference. While these callbacks made it difficult to separate this from the original, the 2013 DEAD had a darker and more mean spirited edge that gave it a very different feel.
And the gore. Jebus. The gore and violence in this film had me shaking my head from time to time. It all made sense in the course of the film, but...wow...it was so over the top it had me giggling. If you blended Italian and Japanese gore and mixed in a little Rob Zombie grit for texture, you might come close to this film if you added a little steroids into the mix as well. The dead are truly evil in this film. Several people bolted as the events washed over the screen - done with the madness it presented and longing for fresh air! hehehe
Both films need to be seen if you love horror. If you've already seen the original, you might want to re-watch it if you have not seen it for a while.
I, for one, want to take films out of their sacred boxes. I'm done thinking that there are films that shouldn't be touched. It takes too much effort and they keep doing it anyway, so why fight it. Especially if it's done right. EVIL DEAD 2013 stands by itself and is a film I'll be returning to from time to time.
The general take-away on it was that many remakes just don't do as well as the originals when you look at reviews and the like. Since that article was written, I've been knee deep in life. Work issues, my little girl going into the "Terrible Twos", a new baby, a daughter going into Stanford and the loss of my Father and all the fallout from that. It's amazing how one's views can change when real issues come on hot and heavy! :)
So...remakes. Whatever. It's fallout from a system that doesn't work in the artist's favor, honestly. Writers write new things, but many studios want a guaranteed return on their investments. Hell, I want that, why wouldn't they? So, they go with things that worked before over unproven ground.
Ti West pointed out in the Innkeepers Extras that there is a ratio that is industry wide.
more studio money = more studio involvement - creative control over the project + more cash
less studio money = less studio involvement + more creative control - less cash
So, it's great having the cash when you're making your movie, but you're going to be facing less creative control more often than not. And studios will remake or sequel out a franchise if it's made money in the past.
I've recently taken a look at some remakes and I've really tried to remove my old "TO HELL WITH THEM!" filter and I have to say it's not as bad as all that. The thing that drove me to do this was hearing some of the ranting from the other side. People bashing remakes to the point where they seem like they may be worse than murdering someone and eating them. :) "HOW DARE THEY TOUCH THAT SACRED FILM!" I've taken the tack of just not caring as much - there are so many more important things in the world to care about, really.
On that note, I re-watched Rob Zombie's Halloween and I enjoyed it. It added some little side-note story items, had some nice "re-envisioning" of the classic Carpenter version and had that Rob Zombie look that you either love or love to hate on. All in all, I watched it and liked it. I'd watch it again for sure.
I've also started re-watching some other remakes like THE BLOB and writing about them as well. I'm sure they have SOMETHING to offer in the mix. I'm also sure that there's crap mixed in there as well (SEE: The Fog remake disaster), but that's a numbers game.
One of my favorite examples of right and wrong remakes can be found withing the LIVING DEAD series. The NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remake was great and brought some grand things to the table - like the fact that the zombies were so slow you could really just walk around them if you had a little room. Fantastic. I love the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, too. As a matter of fact, it got to me enough to were I actually had a little nightmare experience. A first in LONG while when it comes to horror and horror movies. I just don't scare anymore. hehehe But, then you hit the rotten stench of the DAY OF THE DEAD remake and....ouch....it puts me back in the mindset of, "Hmph, maybe they really shouldn't remake movies. That was horrid."
And...my gawd...the EVIL DEAD remake looks great to me and I'm so excited to see it, but the first thing I thought when I heard about it originally was "HOW DARE THEY TRY to remake that CLASSIC!!!" Well, that all ended when I saw the first, shake cam trailer view from Comicon. The second trailer has gotten me even more excited. So much so that I've cleared the decks and gotten flight ok from the Mrs. to go see it opening weekend! :)
How do you feel about remakes? Are you sick of the moaning about remakes or are you a true believer that nothing should be remade?
Even more nuggets of nasty in this EVIL DEAD Redband Trailer #2. BE WARNED! This is not something for work, kids or the squeamish. It's for fellow, hard boiled horror fans.
More gore and violence and nastiness seems to be in order for this remake. More of everything. It's nasty and mean and gruesome. But, will it fly?
I can see the choice to make things WAY over the top with this and, honestly, I can't wait to see it. The original is still near and dear to my heart. Taking things in a more violent and gory space will help to separate it from it's predecessor. But will the gore-fest drive people towards the film or away from it?
The backlash seems to already be starting. Groups up in arms about what they see in the trailer. This sort of thing often drives people to see the film - the only one's being driven further away usually being those who would not see the film anyway.
When I heard that they were remaking EVIL DEAD I was nothing but against it. I thought the original was grand. We watched it over and over again "back in the day" and it was untouchable.
As I've been diving into the genre more and more and have been trying to look at films as solitary works and not part of a family unit or holy, untouchable art, I'm starting to see the value add of the remake in our society.
CARRIE is being remade as well and that has always been looked at as one of the golden, untouchable films in the horror genre, yet there really is something to be said for remaking it and taking modern times, religious beliefs and modern teens into consideration.
Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN remake was shunned by me until I looked at it with a stand alone vision and it's really not a bad film as slashers go. Zombie did a fine job with things.
Which brings s to the EVIL DEAD. Shot on a shoestring and crafted by people who loved the genre, EVIL DEAD is a great film with fantastic, unfinished edges and a rough and ready feel to it. The cabin in the woods sub-genre was turned on it's ear and dragged through the woods along with Bruce Campbell and we all loved it.
But, a modern retelling of the films sweet storyline with some more money behind it and a few modern effects might be all sorts of awesome. And, from what I saw in the trailer, I'll be there opening weekend for sure.
