Just watched the Evil Dead remake. I have some conflicted feels about this movie, but I think it was quite good for the most part.
First, I wasn't upset by the idea of them remaking this, but it was going to be tough considering the modern horror landscape. A big part of the love for the Evil Dead movies was the subversion of horror tropes and the quality of mockery that was applied while not actually sacrificing the level of horror. They instead went for a more straight faced style of horror which was well done, and i suspect a wise idea considering what ruins most remakes is that they seem pointless. There's usually little to nothing changed and its just a clearer picture with worse actors. In this case, it at least set itself apart a bit by taking it's own interpretation and running with it, not even bothering to compete with the same kind of quality of the original. I also greatly appreciated that 99% of the special fx were practical fx.
However, it still has a lot of the problems that bother me about the horror genre, my absolute favorite genre I might add, namely issues with how it portrays women and what happens to them. While the character of Eric was practically a running gag with how often he got stabbed with various objects, there is still that uncomfortable difference in how the violence is applied and presented to the characters dependent on their gender. The most obvious case being the return of the rape tree.
I still can't quite believe they brought back the rape tree.
Well, I can believe it, and the fact that it was applauded by the incredibly creepy fan base, but there's no fucking excuse for it. Sam Raimi took it out of Evil Dead 2 because he grew the fuck up, it should have stayed out. It was a detail that honestly made me enjoy the movie less than I could have.
Overall though, it is a good horror film, but it's flawed in ways that mostly don't have anything to do with the level of talent. It's almost entirely due to the fact that some of these tropes involving women still exist in 2013.