I remember seeing this in theaters in 2013, and walking out feeling pretty conflicted. It had so much atmosphere, so much cool imagery, so much awesome grime. And yet I couldn't get over how SERIOUS it was! It took away all the joy, and lunacy, and absurdist black comedy that made the original work so well. And left us with, well, mostly just a ton of gore. Its been many years since then though, and I've found that a lot of the imagery from the film still sticks with me. So I figured I'd give it another go. Hoping to enjoy it a bit more now that I knew what to expect going in.

The set up is great. Love the opening scene, love the premise of our characters isolating for the sake of what they know will be some unpleasant cold turkey withdrawal. Jane Levy is fantastic, in both human and deadite form. The deadites in this film are just pretty great in general - these gleeful, yellow-eyed demons all have a real presence to them, Levy's Mia especially. I also love the presentation of the woods and the cabin in this film - just a gnarled blackness covering everything, that could be mud, or mold, or just black SLIME. It makes sense why so much of the film's visuals remained stuck in my head for so long.

Unfortunately, a lot of my old feelings about the film remained too. The cast outside of Jane Levy just play things SO DRY and SO SERIOUS. I seem to have a bit of a bias against Lou Taylor Pucci, so that doesn't help things either. It really feels like absolutely no one wants to be there, even before the deadites show up. And I realize that's intentional on the movies part. But jesus does it make it unpleasant to watch! It didn't need to have the same amount of humor as the first or second Evil Dead, but good lord, SOME levity would have gone such a long way to make this a smoother watch.

I felt this especially during the film's middle portion, where we're presented with a series of gialo-esque scenes of slow self-mutilation, as the side characters are possessed and killed one by one. Actual scares are passed over in place of some deeply unpleasant gross out horror. The type of thing that I LOVE when its presented in an absurd way, or with some degree of disconnect from reality. But with the dry tone that proceeded it, I ended up sitting through those scenes asking myself why I chose to subject myself to this again. Give me some sort of a "chaser" after a scene like that! I need some sugar if I'm gonna drink all this harsh medecine!

Thankfully, the last 15 minutes still rocks. It finally settles on a tone that works for me when things kick into high gear and blood starts raining from the sky. It's perhaps telling that the film's awesome final stretch is heralded by a series of quick cuts to a tool shed, in an homage to Raimi's directing style. That's the sort of high energy directing that I wish this whole film had! More loud music and buckets of blood and running away from monsters, and less slow shots of people cutting off their own arms, please!

In the end, I think I've settled back into my initial assessment. This is a frustratingly flawed film that I REALLY wish did it for me more, but unfortunately falls just short of the mark. I might watch it again someday. There's some powerful frames in this thing. But I'll never love it the way that I love the Sam Raimi originals.