1. Bruce Campbell's performance was lightning in a bottle, and cannot/should not be replaced.
2. The poster (above) makes a really arrogant claim.
3. Remakes suck, like when the prequel-remake of The Thing replaced all the original cool creatures with CG, or when Prom Night went PG-13.
Here's the new trailer. When you're done watching, we'll talk.
Back? Okay, here's why I am excited about seeing it:
1. Bruce Campbell didn't actually become our wise-cracking hero "The Chin" until after part 2 took the series in a new, comedic direction. Before that, in the first film, a major appeal factor was that anyone could die at any time (a.k.a. the Joe Bob Briggs rule). The only reason it plays as funny now is because some of the effects haven't aged so well, like Claymation.
2. Arrogant claims? The original called itself the ultimate experience in terror in its own end credits and marketing campaign. Admittedly, by getting on a blacklist of "video nasties" in England, it ultimately backed that claim up...at the time. Nobody calls it the scariest movie any more.
3. There is no CG in this movie. None. At least as far as gore effects go. And clearly there is gore aplenty.
4. I'm tired of every zombie having to follow "Romero rules." Can't we be more creative than that? The zombies in the Resident Evil games don't follow them...yet in the movies they do. The speeders of The Walking Dead may move a little faster, but it's still all about the headshots. If dead tissue is reanimated, why make the head arbitrarily vulnerable just because Night of the Living Dead said so decades ago? Don't fear change - people once thought fast zombies were a terrible idea, and we've grown to accept them in some cases.
Of course, then you get into the debate as to whether Deadites are actually zombies, since demon possession may or may not count. That's a whole separate debate, but by all means have it in comments.
The Evil Dead website wants you to record your reaction to the trailer. I'm certain some of you can bring some, ahem, "creative" ones to the fore.
OK, first off my favorite Evil Dead film is the second one because I felt it had the pefect combination of horror and camp whearas Army of Darkness went practically full camp.
This on the other hand seems to lack much of the soul of the previous films in general and is instead torture porn\snuff film'ish. I understand the tone of the first film was supposed to be exploitation film. However I think this film lost much of the charm all three previous films had especially the second one.
That being said since Raimi was involved seeing all that stuff in context may be better than the gore reel that the trailer is. However, I have a feeling Drag Me To Hell is closer to an Evil Dead followup than this is. This looks more like a more recent torture porn film with a new skin in gaming terms.
Well, at least they don't have CG in it sapping out all the creepiness of the effects like the The Thing prequel did.
I FINALLY watched EVIL DEAD about 4 years ago. I was 31 and this actually scared. Only 1-2 horror films ever really truly scare me and I've watched hundreds of them. Not sure where on stand on this remake.
The fact that Raimi and Campbell are involved, and there's no CG, both make me want to see it. Almost as if they're saying, "Look what we can do 20 years later!"
However, Diablo Cody is a writer on this. I actually like some of her movies, but I wouldn't trust her with this. (See: Jennifer's Body)
Well... I'm not impressed still, but I will watch it. The blood looks cheesy as heck in this, anyone else noticing that?
If the website wanted us to film our reactions, I kinda think Luke should have mentioned that BEFORE the actual video. Now that's sorta ruined unless we are gonna just say "yeah that was cool/crap/etc".
@Kozmik_Pariah Point taken. I will note that I saw a version of this in the theater - and at the end it tells you afterward to "share your scare." Obviously you can't and shouldn't do it in a theater, so I don't think it has to be a real-time recording or anything.
@LYTYah, even the link is only 15 secs of YT videos, and most are pretty boring. I don't think folks get choked up about horror anymore, although there was that time I showed Antichrist to a bunch of folks, but that's more gore as well....
I think it's got horror elements but mostly it feels more like a drama film than anything, with added scares. It's still one of the best movies I've ever seen, and everyone should watch at least one of Lars Von Trier's films.
OK, the gore looks killer in this movie. I'm kinda sold on it, but I still don't think we need it. That said, I don't consider the Evil Dead films zombie movies. They are possession films. And, great ones at that.
Hey guys, remember the days when we could just sit back and enjoy a movie? where we didn't nitpick and argue about whether zombies are zombies, gore is gore or otherwise? Don't get me wrong, i've been pissed off many a time at a remake/reboot, but I'm starting to think maybe the problem isn't the film: Its the people who have seen its previous incarnation and cant help but critique and tear it down for not meeting their expectations. I might be overreading it, but I feel like we need to find a way to get excited for reboots/remakes, even if they've let us down in the past.
@DylanRaishe We kinda did that with Fright Night. But this is The Chin we're talking about here. That happy little cabin is nerd sacred ground. It would be like walking into a church and saying that Jesus didn't have superpowers. Someone in there will get ready to lynch you.
@DylanRaishe I find the zombie debates fun. Don't mean them to come off as negative...but nit-picky, yeah, they are. I think in the past we just had these conversations offline and not so publicly.
ZOMBIES are living people who have been poisoned by a vodoo bokor, buried alive, and then unburied and forced into a hypnotized form of slavery.
GHOULS are the creatures from Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" and the sequels. Romero never used "zombie" to describe his creatures initially, and later he caved in and accepted that they had been erroneously called zombies by the public at large. But as far as folklore goes, they're textbook ghouls: Undead people who eat the flesh of the living and recently-dead.
And EVIL DEAD is about Deadites- Candarian Demons who have possessed living people. They are NOT undead. They are alive. This is evidenced by the fact that Ash himself was fully possessed, but the morning sun drove the Deadite out and left him alive. He was later possessed again, but it only got as far as his hand before he lopped it off. Again, still alive. The tragedy of Evil Dead is that if Ash had only managed to lock up his sister and friends until sunrise, he could have avoided killing them and they would have reverted back to their normal selves. All they'd have to do at that point is follow the path out of the woods (There IS a path, which I'm sure they'd find in the daytime) and never go back to that place.
"Evil Dead", as a title, refers to the demons, not the people they possess.
All that aside, I'm not sure I want to see this remake. It looks like a pile of recent horror/torture-porn cliches. Yes, yes, I get it. Oooo she licked a razor blade and that's meant to make me wince. Oooo she's whispering... That makes it seem more intense, right?
Call me a purist, but I like horror to be original. Piling up a bunch of ideas from other horror movies into a remake of one that was original when it was first made isn't going to work for me. SAW was original at the time of its release. HOSTEL was just SAW mixed with the whole slasher "kill the partying kids" cliche, and it kinda sucked. This Evil Dead looks like Hostel mixed with The Descent (awful cliche jump-scare/whisper-tension movie) with Raimi's plot tacked on for undeserved cred.
@LYT Well the first thing that we have to do is decide what is a definition of Zombie. Granted this could have the same blowback as defining, what is a planet, but needs to be done.
So Luke, what characteristics need to be met for you to define something as Zombie and not different for example possession of a dead or alive body?
@LYT Well I think you should do a list of characteristics for Zombie. Give examples of who is and who is not a Zombie by your definition. I'll expect to see it sometime in the next two weeks and then we can really get this conversation cooking. ( I leave the title up to you.)
@Someguy@LYT I think you could go either way. The intellect guiding them, if there is one, ought to be external rather than internal, though. That's pretty much a constant.
@Someguy@LYT It's a fluid definition, especially if you go back to pre-Romero zombie movies and Haitian voodo, in which suspended animation counts.
I'd say zombies are effectively walking dead. "Effectively" in that the death need not be 100% literal, but close enough for horseshoes. The versions we know now are essentially ugly, stupid vampires - and vampires have a huge range of possibilities too.
That's why I'd like to see other iterations that aren't just Romero redux.
@DylanRaishe It's very true, some remakes are judged harsh before they even come out. Some are compared before they are even released. With that being said, I didn't see too much to make me want to rush to the theater. Then again the original didn't either. I didn't see it until years later on video.
Another reason that the original Evil Dead was funny is because they did stuff like blast overgratuitous fountains of blood everywhere. One of the first things they showed in this trailer? A girl puking a fountain of blood onto someone. No lie, I actually laughed out loud at that part.
@LYT@mrskippy Okay, but how old were you then, versus today? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm just saying it might be something to consider if you were very young then. Obviously I don't know.
@mrskippy@LYT I think I was 12. I also remember ads for Evil Dead 2 claiming 'there;s only one movie scarier than The Evil Dead." That clearly turned out to be misdirection. But in its day, Evil Dead 1 was considered primarily scary, and it was a big deal that Stephen King endorsed it.
There is a very big difference between Horror and Gore.
Horror makes you afraid to turn off the lights, or walk into a room by yourself. I am seeing nothing but Gore here. I don't feel scared to see it, I feel sick. I miss a good Horror film, not something that makes me want to puke cause someone is slicing their tongue open with a box cutter. Maybe I am getting to old for this?
Yeah. Give me "The Fog" or "The Thing" (Carpenter), or "Bloody Birthday" over this torture-porn, gore-fest crap. I enjoy the Saw movies, but only because they have a cool story to support the gore, and they're not all-gore, all the time. But "Hostel" movies suck, and I refuse to watch "Human Centipede" on principle alone.
Gore is fine when it's supporting the horror of the story, but when the only horror IS the gore, then there's no real horror to speak of. Watching people being dismembered by itself is not scary; It's gross.
It's like with comedy... You can incorporate curse words into your comedy to enhance it (see Carlin's "words you can't say on TV" skit), but as Eddie Murphy pointed out, he can't just walk out on stage and say, "Hey! Filth, flarn, motherfucker, dick, pussy, snot and shit. Good night. Good night. Suck my dick. Bye-bye."
This movie, and most torture-porn/gorefest is the equivalent of walking on stage and cursing without any jokes in-between.
@nix.nightbird@JimmyBones I AM SICK OF THIS NEW CHAT SHIT! I have tried 6 times to write something in my defense, and every time I have click somewhere other then this fucking box. I have lost it! I have wrote 6 times now a 5 - 7 paragraph essay on my defense. LOST! FUCK THIS VOICE SHIT! and @LYT and @nix.nightbird. I had good counter points. I am giving up. Maybe tomorrow. When I am fresh minded. I will write something in notepad and just copy paste it. -__-
@JimmyBones Evil Dead 1 had both aspects, at least as I remember it from my childhood. Buckets of gore, but still scared me to be in my dad's house up in the woods.
Yeah, this just has too much gore for me. I expect some gore in a movie about demon possession and reanimated corpses, but I don't need to see a girl slice her tongue with an exacto knife and then shove it in another girl's mouth.
@Anony-Mouse I actually thought that was one of the more clever scenes they showed. Something I've noticed about most of the hack "horror" movies recently is that there's an attempt to shove sexiness into all the trailers. Usually there's some lesbian teasing or bikinis or something. This one took the "sexy lesbian kiss" and turned it on its head. I thought it was a cool subversion. >.>
@mrskippy@Anony-Mouse That did make me cringe in that special horror way. And I dunno, it does kind of add something to it about just how much Deadites are willing to do to get what they want and how they don't care about anything but freaking you the hell out and then making you one of them. Kind of reminded me of the Cenobites in that way.
I am excited to see this movie for sure because i think they want to re-invent the horror genre and bring it back to some past glory. But i will watch this with an open mind and without lofty expectations. Now as for your comment about fast zombies...I loved them in the Dawn of the Dead remake but in nothing else. I want slow, lumbering zombies because that is what would probably happen in the real world anyway.
@Canadian.Scott 28 Days Later? The faster moving ones in The Walking Dead?
Also, in the real world zombies would be walking around with a giant load in their pants. Think about it - they eat constantly but never stop to relieve themselves.
28 Days Later are not zombies (or ghouls). They're alive and they have super-rabies. They're not undead. You can kill them the same way you'd kill any person- Shoot them in the head, the heart, slice their jugular, suffocate them, burn them... Doesn't matter. There's not "zombie" about the rage virus people in that series.
@LYT@Canadian.Scott That is why i love the Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, it seems like the most reasonable way to figure out what would really happen if the dead started rising from the grave. And to speak to your other statements, to me a zombie is a human that when dead, comes back to life with a need for human flesh and can only be killed by a trauma to the brain.
@LYT@Canadian.Scott No zombies, fast or slow, in 28 Days/Weeks Later. Just people (very much still alive) infected with the rage virus. So to compare them to zombies is apples-to-oranges. I've seen some brisk Walkers -- which I take to be the "fresher" converts -- in TWD, but no Olympic sprinters. Also, as long as I'm feeling nitpicky, nobody ever claimed zombies actually digest anything. No digestion = no waste. They might pass whole (or rotted) foods. Or maybe stuff just rots in their gut until the gasses rupture their abdomen. Of course, perpetually flatulent zombies are a whole other kind of terror...
In the first RE games, they're clearly zombies. They die as a result of the infection, and they're reanimated. They aren't breathing, have no heartbeat, and can't really think.
People in 28 Days Later are alive. They have a pulse. They require oxygen. They can even think a little bit (though the rage overpowers rational thought).
@madnessmonk@LYT@Canadian.Scott What about voodoo zombies? They were zombies FIRST, are completely alive, and have no urge to eat or infect others. Are they not zombies now?
@LYT@madnessmonk@Canadian.Scott Good question. I've got no idea what you call the critters in RE, a franchise that never grabbed me. Just saying the nasties in 28DL are 100% alive, compelled simply to kill rather than feast on flesh/brains, capable of starving, etc... So not really part of the zombie discussion.
@Someguy @Gallen_Dugall @LYT @madnessmonk @Canadian.Scott If it's the History Channel, ya know alien astronauts have to tie in somehow... [IMG]%s[/IMG]
@madnessmonk@LYT@Canadian.Scott Followup, then - if they're not zombies in 28 Days Later, what are they in the Resident Evil games (let's just take the first ones and leave out Las Plaguis for simplicity's sake)? Humans infected by the T-virus, that die with repeated gunshots like humans do. Yet we all call them zombies, no?
