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"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

 – H.P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature”

  People who haven’t experienced a horror film in theaters have no idea what they’re missing. Like cautiously wandering through the seemingly uncharted landscape of a haunted house[1], settling into a squeaky movie theater chair to see a horror film (on opening night, especially, although any evening/night showing when a movie is first released works) is riveting, due to the reactions of the audience. Most people who view horror films enjoy the feeling of being afraid, and when people are afraid, they react in a number of ways, many of which contribute to an exciting, fun, and sometimes downright hilarious collective experience.

I remind everyone of this as I excitedly scamper up the illuminated staircase at Cinemark Theaters with my boyfriend, brother, and two close friends on April 5th, 2013. It’s opening night for the Evil Dead remake, and I’ve begun my typical movie theater scan for the horror audience stereotypes, and they are abundant here tonight. There are adorable couples safely cuddled into each other’s arms who could, potentially, end up in each other’s laps by the end of it all, using each other’s clothing and fingers as eye shields; those vibrant people – mostly large groups of younger women – talking loudly already who will most likely become the vocalists throughout the film, shouting at the characters and their decisions and the monsters that they’ll face; the burly, muscular men who strolled in with their buddies, talking up a big game and seeming relatively badass – these guys normally crack halfway through, and some may even let out a little scream here and there; and then there’s “the Evil Dead fan club,” which mostly consists of my group, decked out in t-shirts with designs from the original Evil Dead trilogy and quoting the main character’s one-liners from the original films like the massive nerds we are.

Our fan club seems sparse. While this bodes well for a modern horror film in general, this doesn’t bode well for a modern remake of a campy horror film because these people most likely aren’t expecting camp[2]. The original trilogy never took itself seriously, and to expect seriousness from this remake seems to defeat the purpose, as the film is a remake of a not-too-serious trilogy, and remakes attempt to – at the very least – maintain the tone of their predecessors, lest the filmmakers face hellfire raining upon their heads from a maelstrom of angry fans with pitchforks and torches. That being said, my people and I are not expecting to be extremely scared – a little bit, sure, but not a lot. We’re here to jump and to laugh, but a rather large part of me is telling me that this film’s tagline – the questionable “The Most Terrifying Film You Will Ever Experience” – has brought these people here today, and I don’t know if they’re going to leave feeling as satisfied as the fan club and I hope to be because we’ve merely taken the tagline as a marketing scheme and nothing more.

As soon as the theater darkens following the previews, everyone is in the zone. A younger woman in front of us – one of the vocalists – shrieks and jumps as a door unexpectedly slams onscreen; this is not even a part of the movie – it’s a production company logo. Everyone chuckles as this happens because, if a slightly spooky production logo is enough to incite a scare, we all cannot wait for what the movie itself will bring. “This is gonna be so damn fun,” whispers one of my group, and within moments, our theater is taken on a journey to a deserted cabin in the woods laden with shrieking and swearing possessed people, blood and gore to the extreme[3], and camp done to a campy turn. Yet, no one laughs. My group and I giggle as characters make stupid decisions and encounter frightening situations, yet all I hear from the other audience members surrounding me are collective groans and snippy, quiet “what the hell is he doing?!”s as characters behave ridiculously onscreen.

My confusion reaches an all-time high when the climax comes. My friends and I are some of the few who cheer and shout “YEAH!” as the female protagonist confronts the bad guy – in this case, a sinewy demon who literally crawled out of hell – in typical Evil Dead fashion with a chainsaw after delivering an outrageously cheesy one-liner, but everyone else in the theater sits silently and stoically, as if they don’t even care. As soon as the credits roll, only a select few of us stay until the end of the credits to see the protagonist from the original film deliver one of his outrageously cheesy one-liners, and I’m left with a lackluster opening night experience and few answers as to why this happened. Did the audience not have a good time? Did they hate the movie? If so, why?

In 1973, in movie theaters across the nation, men and women alike found themselves clutching their feathered hair and fearing that they might inadvertently mess their bellbottom jeans at the sight of a young girl possessed by a demonic entity. Clad in a nightdress stained electric green by vomit, equipped with a head that turned 360 degrees, and bearing the lurid vocabulary of the most debauched sailor imaginable, Linda Blair’s demonic 12-year-old vessel, Regan MacNeil, made many a filmgoer check their closets and under their beds for possessed adolescents before hitting the hay. This iconic character was the main focus of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, one of the most revolutionary American horror films ever released. Scenes from this film – such as a monstrous scene in which a possessed Regan violently masturbates with a crucifix while shrieking sexual obscenities at her aghast mother – resonated with audiences thirsty for scares, as the film presented shocking ideas and situations that audiences had never seen or imagined before.

While scenes from the film on YouTube are often peppered with modern internet users’ critiques questioning the film’s scare factor[4], most people agree that the movie holds up as one of the most terrifying films of all time. A video of audience reactions from pre-screenings of The Exorcist in 1973 imparts just how strongly this veritable horror godfather affected American audiences eager for scares when it was first released. The video reports long lines of people awaiting their turn to see the film. Early on, the film earned the reputation of sometimes causing viewers to faint or vomit in the theater. “I wanna see if it’s gonna make me throw up!” says one giggling filmgoer standing in a crowded line. A fast-talking theater usher in a blue vest and bowtie says, “I never in my life have known a movie to make people faint – I mean, it’s hard to make people faint.” Immediately thereafter, the video reveals a scene of a woman in a floral shirt falling to the floor as two movie ushers in red blazers rush to her aid. The blue vested and bowtied usher then goes on to say, “Well, as soon as they faint, I get out smelling salts.”

The fact that theaters had to prepare safety protocol for one film is fascinating enough, but the video also showcases interviews with a few people who were too terrified to stay for the duration of the film. “I have a friend in there, alone, and I-I, I don’t want to leave her in there alone,” says soft-voiced woman with short brown hair, a slight smirk tugging at her lips. Phrases like, “I’m not going back in there,” “It’s very, very real,” and “I can’t even describe it, it’s so horrible” are thrown around right and left. The video culminates in a stuttery, “I don’t like it, I wanna go home,” uttered by a horrorstricken woman as she hurriedly storms away from the camera[5].

The Exorcist’s success as a horror film seems to stem from its subtlety and originality. Filmgoers in 1973 were quaking in their boots at the mention of the film because they were shown a new, scary-as-all-hell story that they had never encountered before, told in such a manner that questioned their morals. Seeing a portrayal of demonic possession so rooted in realism and presented with a bit of bloodshed and shock (but not too much) was new and fresh for people seeking scares[6]. Bearing that in mind, originality seems to be a huge factor in determining a horror film’s “scareability.”

Alternatively, today is a difficult time to be taken seriously as a horror fan. There was a time when horror was respected; these were the days of The Exorcist, and these were also the days of Jaws and The Shining, amongst others. All of these films garnered praise for their subtlety and originality, and above all else, these are some of the films that people mention most when they discuss the horror films that really get under their skin. Nowadays, though, the horror genre has evolved along with its audience. Anyone who sees a horror film today is not affected by Exorcist homages, one is not greeted by the subtle orchestral “dun dun” indicating the presence of the great white shark in Jaws before a character meets his/her doom, and while axe-wielding Jack Torrance chasing his family around and shouting “HERE’S JOHNNY!” was effective in its day, one does not encounter this kind of suspense in horror today without the presence of buckets of blood and cringe-worthy violence.

Part of this seems to be due to the evolution of the modern audience’s preferences. After posing some horror-related questions to the friend-filled digital space known as Facebook, I got quite a few insightful responses about modern horror and how people perceive it. A good chunk of responses dealt primarily with predictability and originality. One person said, “I feel like the modern 'horror' movie is nothing but torture and sexual content. There needs to be a driving story behind it or it is just nonsense… Horror movies at their essence I believe are supposed to elicit emotion from the viewer – not just shock and awe.” In a similar light, another person openly dissected the predictability of horror today: “Horror is predictable. I know what is scary and therefore I am guessing what will happen before it happens. What scares me is when there is something more horrifying than what I predicted.” To further this idea even more, another said, “Much like how action films must now have huge explosions and car chases to be considered part of the genre, horror must have blood and death and sex and blood and death and death and blood and sex. So while it's perfectly fine to dislike horror films because you don't like the fear factor, I believe a large group of people dislike horror because of its predictability. Shock value can only go so far. I think I speak for most when I say that a horror movie scares me more if it has a reasonable amount of plausibility.” To sum it all up in one quote from another person, “It seems that the concept of the modern moviegoer is about the extremes. Extreme vulgarity, violence, sexuality, or just gritty/edgy concepts in general. There is nothing wrong with pushing boundaries, but I appreciate it when things have a point.”

Bearing all of this in mind, what we see today is peculiar. Filmmakers are trying to peg down what audiences want to see, but from these responses, it seems as though audiences want to see something different. Audiences want to be scared, but with movies like The Exorcist, Jaws,and The Shining already in existence, filmmakers feel as though they must try new things in order to avoid predictable storylines. In this case, trying new things means breaking away from the subtle norm to create something new and extreme. This “something new and extreme” most recently took shape in the complete opposite of subtlety that arose with movies like Saw and Hostel, both films that settle comfortably into the much-debated “torture porn”[7] genre. These films evolved from the increased gore and shock factor in exploitation films such as The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes during the ’70s, and the slasher films that arose during the ’80s, such as Friday the 13th. Hostel,in particular, aimed to amp up the gore factor and abandon the subtlety in an effort to spook audiences, but by and large, it was ineffective because audiences want the whole enchilada. They do not want too much gore because it shows too much; they want subtlety, and at the same time, they want originality.

It makes sense, then, that audiences might be let down by a film like Evil Dead. When a movie boasts that it could, potentially, be “The Most Terrifying Film You Will Ever Experience,” it makes perfect sense that movie theaters will fill to the brim with the average horror moviegoers who are all anxious to see if they’ll, once and for all, find themselves satiated by a modern horror filmmaker’s sacrificial offering. What the filmmakers behind Evil Dead sought to do, though, was to take an old horror film and remake it for today’s audiences without stepping too much into torture porn and without letting down fans of the old trilogy. The paradox here is unfair to the filmmakers and the audience both. Horror audiences who don’t appreciate anything beyond the scare factor cannot appreciate the vast effort that some filmmakers try to funnel into their films, and horror filmmakers are forced to market their films as the next best scare fest in order to gather an audience.

What should we expect from horror, then, if we’re not expecting frights? Is it possible to make good horror films without worrying about the scare factor? My friend Evan said it best when he eloquently stated, “I do find that horror films have the most difficult challenge in making ‘good’ movies. The job of a horror film is to scare the entire audience that already knows that it is fake. If you judge a horror film on how much it scares you...Then I am sorry, but you will have a very difficult time finding a ‘good’ horror film.” This makes quite a bit of sense. What scares me may not scare you, and what scares you may be vastly different from what scares the rest of the world, so it doesn’t make sense to hold filmmakers to the standard of scaring everyone. But, at the same time, doesn’t the genre seem null and void if it isn’t scaring us? What is the point of “horror” if we don’t find ourselves horrified by what we’re seeing on the screen?

I found myself pondering these questions profusely on April 5th. My gang and I loved the film because we were able to see beyond the scare factor, but strutting out of the theater and back into reality, we were greeted by our fellow moviegoers as they questioned the nature of the film. “I don’t know. I mean, it was good, I guess. I just wasn’t really scared. It was gross, but that kinda stuff doesn’t scare me, you know?” says the familiar girl who was sitting in front of me – the one who jumped at the production logo at the beginning – to her friends in the lobby. The Internet holds just as many noncommittal reviews from people stating that the film was good by film standards but didn’t hold that horrific mojo that they had been dying to see.

The question as to whether or not we’ll ever see that mojo hit the screen within our generation is, at this time, unanswerable. We live in a society in which a genre that once satisfied fans has run out of fresh ideas, and without this freshness, it seems as though fans looking for scares are about as lost as zombies wandering in an open field, searching for an unsuspecting human to latch onto in order to gain their sustenance.

In the meantime, in the midst of an ever-shifting genre, horror fans may find solace in understanding that not all films under the horror umbrella succeed in scaring audiences. Had viewers of the Evil Dead remake allowed themselves to appreciate the nuances of the film beyond its scare factor, it’s possible that more people would have left the film feeling satisfied. At the same time, if horror filmmakers were allowed to market horror films as good films rather than scary films, it is possible that our society might be able to revive the genre and leave room for new insight from filmmakers, allowing them to create their own originality that doesn’t stem from failed attempts to show viewers something newly horrifying and revolutionary. If the genre continues to falter like it is right now, however, and if people do not change their ways of thinking about horror, it may continue to slowly perish, not unlike the unfortunate victims who face their untimely demises within the celluloid confines of the genre’s films.

  [1] When I use the moniker “haunted house,” I mean those manmade Halloween mazes filled to the brim with makeup-shrouded actors and actresses, and not an actual house believed to be haunted. One may differentiate a manmade haunted house from a “real” haunted house with the following formula: 1-10 frightening landscapes taken from any film or scary story – any physical contact with victims who enter said environment + 15-30 characters that fulfill the environment requirements of these landscapes x (at least 120 metric feet of fog produced by a standard fog machine + at least 30 sorts of spooky sounds) + 1 supremely scary bastard with a chainsaw, sans chain on blade. PEMDAS and preciseness need not apply here; horror is allowed to be sloppy.

[2] By “camp” horror, I mean horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously. You know those moments where a character is trying so very hard to be quiet and then slips and falls down the stairs by accident? I classify that as camp, and fans of campiness find it bizarre when people take moments like these seriously and don’t take the time to laugh.

[3] Seriously. EXTREME blood. The sky was even raining blood at one point in the film. I felt so bad for the cast of this film because it was filmed during winter in New Zealand, and the feeling of fake blood freezing onto your appendages cannot be pleasant. The lead actress even got a sizeable chunk of fake blood and dirt lodged in her ear canal; it took her 3 months to get it out completely, and within that time, she got an ear infection so bad that her doctor puzzled over it. A lot of effort was put into this film, and it was obvious, simply from the practical gore effects alone. This was not a movie made solely for monetary gain. It was made for horror fans.

[4] My personal favorite comment is from user “xxprincesspenguinxx.” This comment has been voted so negatively by other users that it’s been blocked by YouTube administrators: “FUNNIEST SHIT EVER!!!!!!!!! am i the only one who laughed the whole time in the movie?? MY BED IS SHAKING LOL [sic. Literally everything, sic].”

[5] Interestingly enough, the new Evil Dead film also used an audience reaction video (recorded at a screening held at The University of California, San Diego) as a marketing tactic. Their video, however, shows actual clips of people jumping, covering their faces, and screaming as they are watching the film. While there are a number of posts online on Twitter and other social media outlets about people fainting during the movie, many speculate that fainting spells caused by the film could have been caused by choppy editing cuts and/or preexisting medical conditions aggravated by the film’s extreme nature and gore.

Students interviewed after the film say things such as, “It was non-stop from beginning to end,” “I watched it from my sweatshirt,” “I think I cried at one point because I was screaming so hard,” and “You need someone [or something] to hold onto. You will die by yourself.” No one mentions needing to leave during the film because it was too scary; instead, these reactions seem more like the reactions one might see from people riding a rollercoaster – a quick, fun thrill ride that leaves you momentarily satisfied, but doesn’t manage to burrow under your skin and perturb you psychologically.

[6] To further prove this point, the initial teaser trailer for the film was nothing more than an image of the “white-faced demon,” Friedkin’s visual representation of the demon in the film, fading in and out over and over again. The white-faced demon was – as its name suggests – a pale white creature with yellowed, pointy teeth and dark red circles around its eyes; its presence in the teaser trailer (even though it did nothing more than fade in and out) was deemed too scary for audiences and pulled from theaters. One can only imagine the lovely surprise that awaited viewers who were scared of the teaser when – or if – they finally saw the film.

I understand if you liked the original due to its low budget cheesiness and charm, and that's fine, but we shouldn't expect that charm from a movie this big to begin with. I also understand if you feel that the story doesn't need to be redone, but I respectfully disagree. To those of us who have been waiting years for Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell to revisit Evil Dead in some capacity, this is the foot in the door that we needed; if you want sequels, you need a fan base, and if you want to build a fan base more than 20 years after the fact, you need to put something out there that people are going to be interested in beyond the cult classic status. Welcome, Evil Dead 2013, to the horror film canon. In my opinion, you're gonna go down in bloody modern history, buddy. Before I dive in any more, here's some context: ever since I was about 8 years old and illegally watching horror films against my parents' will, I've been an enormous Evil Dead fan. I consider the original ED films to be my major stepping stones into horror. They are my some of my all-time favorite movies to this day, I watch them quite often, and I could analyze them forever. Paradoxically, I don't love these films and analyze them because they represent perfection in filmmaking. On the contrary, I love these films because, to me, they represent perfection in the film experience. I can laugh, cringe, maintain intrigue, shout at my television, and at the end of the day, I can still sit there and think, "wow -- there's a lot to be analyzed here concerning horror. Why is this my ideal horror experience?" These films will never be Oscar-worthy, but frankly, I don't care. Our society needs to move away from the notion that, in order for movies to be good, they must fulfill the standards dictated by critics and the Academy. This trilogy was ahead of its time, and there's a reason that these movies stand so strongly on their own as cult classics: to me, this is because these films were flirting with horror metafiction before it was cool. Scream and Cabin in the Woods? Dude, I love them, but Evil Dead made fun of itself looooong before it was the hip thing to do. That being said, to confront the "remake" question, Sam Raimi (the director of the original trilogy) recently said that he considers the underlying story of ED to be a sort of legend-like ghost story you'd share around a campfire that deserves to be retold in a number of ways, especially as it evolves over time. He beat people to this with the sequel to the first movie (my personal favorite of all of the films), where he told a similar story in an entirely different way, emphasizing comedy and the grotesque moreso than was considered in the first film. He then pushed the envelope even further in the early '90s with Army of Darkness (which is, undoubtedly, the film most people have seen from this trilogy because it is the most accessible for non-horror fans), creating another version of a similar story in which everything is insanely goofy. As far as the remake is concerned, I was initially frustrated with the announcement of a remake because the original trilogy already made its point with story retelling and building metafictional constructs through said retelling. I was worried that a remake would be just that: a REMAKE, as in taking something and trying to recreate it. Most modern horror remakes do this, and quite frankly, it blows... It blows like an erupting geyser containing a whale firing someone out of its blowhole who just so happens to be happily blowing bubbles in midair... Thankfully, though, what we have here is NOT a standard remake, in my opinion. This is another retelling, like its predecessors before it, in the form of a reboot -- it gives the series the kick in the pants needed to revive it, like the Fonz beating a jukebox into submission. Sure, there are some lovely homages to the original -- some aspects of Evil Dead need to be there in order for it to be Evil Dead -- but by and large, this is Evil Dead's story told for today's generation, and not only is it a rollercoaster and the most fun I've had at a movie in a while, but it's actually kind of powerful. What we get with the reboot is a modern metafictional retelling of the old story. Instead of a group of friends going to the cabin to drink and party, we get a group of friends going to support their childhood friend, Mia, in her effort to combat her addiction to heroin. This is a welcome change from the party story, as this seems more realistic, especially today. A book of the dead (not Necronomicon Ex Mortis, specifically, or even the book from the original film, either) is discovered in the cellar, and a high school teacher with an insatiable desire to question authority and do whatever the hell he pleases (REPRESENT) blatantly ignores all warnings on the book, recites the Latin, and brings forth the demon carnage, Kandarian or otherwise. Without a doubt, the biggest thing for which this film is garnering praise, and what you will, undoubtedly, hear most about when people talk about it, is the thousands of buckets of blood, viscera, and other bodily, um, excretions that coat the screen and grace your eyes. We've got tongues split with box cutters, shower burns from hell, arms chopped off and hanging loosely by damaged thready sinews and tendons, syringes used as weaponry, and -- of course -- a few chainsaw and boomstick injuries, and this isn't even half of the macabre gore presented therein. This is the first film to make me cringe and squirm in a long time, and that's saying a lot. It helps that these are all practical effects; ain't no CGI here, folks, and dag nabbit, it is successful. I haven't seen a movie this bloody since Peter Jackson's Dead Alive (another favorite of mine; you should check it out if you haven't already), and this a highly modern take on the original story in that regard. How many modern films have we seen recently that are rated PG-13, wherein explosions kill thousands of people bloodlessly and unceremoniously? For instance, in the Transformers movies (thank you, Michael Bay) we have zero recognition of the fact that, even though the Transformers saved the world, the autobots also managed to kill like, 100 people just walking down the street and stepping on cars. Movies like this are everywhere, and I won't address the detrimental nature of that because that's a diatribe in itself, but in Evil Dead, you get a blow by blow of every injury. It's almost as though the film is making an argument against the unceremonious PG-13 body count in today's society by forcing you to see the opposite end of the spectrum: these injuries are outrageous, and you will not escape the bloodshed whatsoever. This makes the violence appear far more significant to the average moviegoer without treading into "torture porn" territory. On top of this, in this retelling, pain serves as a hellish form of punishment and psychological torment. This brings me to *drumroll* ENGLISH MAJOR MOMENTS! *audience coos, ahhs, and awws* So many moments in this movie gave me an English major lady boner, which I was not expecting in the least. First of all, the demons in this movie are far different from the deadites in the original trilogy; tying this to the notion that the book of the dead is different and possession occurs more ceremoniously here, it seems as though these movies -- the old trilogy and the new film -- are a lot more deep and interesting than we assume they are. The demons in this film are weaker and more Exorcist-like, sort of like a diluted form of the Kandarian demons from the first trilogy, suggesting that focus is being built upon the different books of the dead presented in all of the films, and if they cross Ash's universe with the new one and extrapolate this idea, I will most likely squeal like a 12-year-old girl at a One Direction concert (yes -- these movies REALLY are my equivalent to that). *SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU FEAR SPOILERS* At the same time, the drug storyline builds a much bigger metaphorical plot for the movie in which we're not only seeing Mia -- the junkie -- combat real demons, but we're also seeing her combat her inner demons as well. It's fitting that Mia is the first to be possessed, and even before she is possessed, she's acting screwy due to withdrawal, making her the perfect vessel for evil in this film. Her brother, in an attempt to cleanse the evil from her body and vanquish it, plans to burn her but immediately reconsiders and buries her alive instead after creating a makeshift defibrillator out of a car battery and syringes (I loved this -- so campy). I got another English major lady boner on top of the one I already had when he put her in a red burial dress (signifying vitality, of course), and when she is brought back to life, we are viciously thrown into one of my favorite endings of recent history. Mia is forced to combat the human embodiment of the evil itself (which is, basically, a demon doppelganger of Mia) while the skies literally rain blood. Not only was this visually stunning (I want a framed print of one particularly beautiful scene near the end involving a chainsaw and a raging fire in the background. I'm not kidding... It was gorgeous), but it served as a way for Mia to really earn her place as the survivor of the film and gain a second chance through conquering the inner and outer evil, so to speak. This brings me to the acting, ultimately. This is another aspect of the film that I've seen bashed in most reviews. First and foremost, if you're watching Evil Dead films for exemplary acting, then you're clearly watching the wrong films. What I want from Evil Dead is a certain degree of hamminess that points out to the viewers that they are, indeed, watching a horror film. The whole point of Evil Dead to me is the fact that it knows it's a horror film and wants you to ride along with it. That being said, the acting in this movie, in my opinion, had a great degree of intentional hamminess blended perfectly with some solid acting chops on behalf of a very capable cast. They knew they were in an Evil Dead movie, and Jane Levy and Lou Taylor Pucci in particular seemed to be having a damn blast with it. And Jane Levy, man... If they gave out prestigious awards for horror performances, this girl would garner ALL OF THEM. She essentially played 3 characters, nailed them all, and at the end of the day, she *SPOILERS FOR THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH* was able to make lines like "FEAST ON THIS, MOTHERFUCKER" and -- my personal favorite because I love it when characters in horror films finally decide that the torture needs to end, especially since this line came right after a car crushed her arm and she finally just got pissed off and ripped half of her arm off -- "I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT" sound awesome before unleashing some Ash-like badassery upon the evil. I would love to watch Suburgatory now (the comedic show she's most known for) because if she's half as good at comedy as she was here, then this girl deserves about 1000 more roles than she has right now. Finally, what I loved most about this film was its reconciliation of campiness and seriousness. The original movie was not intended to be overtly funny; the sequels, on the other hand, were. People seem to forget that Evil Dead is not an entirely comedic series, and what I loved about the retelling was the fact that it managed to tell a serious story without taking itself too seriously whatsoever. People in my theater were not laughing much, but there comes a point when the injuries simply become too outrageous, or when someone delivers a certain line, or when a character commits the exact crime that you don't want him/her to commit, that you just cannot help but start laughing. This over-the-top-ness is one of the chief factors in all of the Evil Dead films that made me fall in love with them and the horror genre in general, and I was so happy to see it present here. The score, in particular, added to the campiness perfectly; it was scary when it needed to be, but some parts had a very Danny Elfman's Beetlejuice score vibe about them, which gave the movie a definite, bouncy "I am on a silly horror ride" feel. Lastly, to confront what I didn't like: (1) I was having trouble getting into the first half of the movie initially, and I think this is because I read the script before seeing the movie. They omitted many scenes from the script in the final cut of the movie. With these cut scenes, I feel like the pacing was knocked off-kilter a little bit because they ended up loading 15 minutes of dialogue with some awkward lines to set up relationships and build character development. However, again, we don't watch Evil Dead for these things, and I actually ended up loving the way that the first half played out after seeing the second half in its entirety because I think the awkward dialogue adds to the metafictional qualities I discussed earlier (it almost makes fun of the way modern horror movies attempt to build characters -- no idea if this was intentional on the filmmakers' behalf, but that's how I see it). (2) Fede Alvarez, the director of this film, did some amazing things -- particularly, the ending was his idea -- and I never thought I'd say this after being so thrilled about Raimi, Campbell, and Tapert's involvement, but I would have liked to have seen the movie with what Alvarez wanted rather than what fans and producers Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert insisted he include. I hope we get a director's cut (or at least an unrated cut with deleted scenes and plenty of special features) when the movie is released on DVD and Blu-Ray, and I also sincerely hope that he goes through with his plan to do a sequel that does its own thing entirely. (3) The film was advertised as "the most terrifying film you will ever experience," and I entered the movie knowing this wasn't going to be the case, but other people will not do that, guaranteed. While I understand that the tagline is a throwback to the original's "the ultimate experience in grueling horror" tagline, I feel like this is going to piss a lot of people off because gore does not equal horror; it equals gagging and cringing, but it's not the sort of psychological horror that will leave you shaking in your boots. Granted, my tastes differ from everyone elses, but I think that a lot of negative feedback concerning this movie is going to be fueled by its tagline, and that's highly unfortunate because it does so many praiseworthy things as a horror film, but many people -- particularly today's generation -- don't seem to realize that horror movies mess with far more constructs than the scare factor alone. This is why many people didn't seem to understand the broader qualities of Cabin in the Woods, and this is also why many people seem to misinterpret movies like Drag Me to Hell (another fun and silly Sam Raimi splatter romp) as strictly horror films rather than horror comedies.

Overall, I loved the heck out of this movie, and it was so satisfying to leave the theater, satiated (and even exceeded) hype in hand. It's been a long time since I've immediately announced "I WANT TO SEE THAT AGAIN" literally as soon as the credits started rolling, but this certainly evoked that emotion from me tenfold, and even prompted a long beer-fueled discussion at Old Chicago afterward. Again, if you think of this movie like a rollercoaster, you will appreciate it immensely, but if you're looking for a proper, hoity toity Oscar-worthy experience, then you should probably stay home and watch Argo or The King's Speech or something because you've come to the wrong place. The rest of us will continue to laugh, scream, and cheer for the bloody insanity that questions our morals and frays our nerves.