We all know that The
Evil Dead is a wonderfully inane cult series. But the resurgence of the franchise with the
new Evil Dead brought me back to the
originals and has had me thinking about the entire quartet
(quad-ril-ogy?). I’ll be the first to
admit that a lot of my thoughts are guilty of comparing Evil Dead 2013 to its predecessors, but that’s fair, right? After all, that’s a certain responsibility of
a remake to expand upon, while still honoring, the source material.
After much deliberation, I find myself with 5 main thoughts
on the Evil Dead series. Some of these contain SPOILERS – so be forewarned.
AND DO NOT TOUCH THE NECRONOMICON WITHOUT SAYING THE THREE
WORDS!
5) The soul count in Evil Dead 2013
There are 6 available characters in the new movie: Mia,
David, Natalie, Olivia, Eric, and Grandpa (the dog). The book tells of 5 souls that have to be
taken in order to unleash the big bad.
Mia’s soul is taken first.
Then Olivia. Followed by Natalie
and Eric.
Where’s #5?
Presumably, that honor belongs to David. But did the Deadites really take his
soul? For a wannabe Ash, he went out in
a decidedly un-Ash-y and distinctly burned-to-ashes fashion. Does that even count as a soul grab? I figured that was counted on the stats more
like an RBI or an assist…
But assuming David is the
fifth soul, this leaves some disturbing implications. Namely that despite saving Mia from the grip
of the Deadites, she no longer has a soul.
If saving her from possession restored her soul, that make the count “four
souls and an appetizer that the waiter spit in,” rather than “five souls, one
cooked well.”
So if Mia has no soul, it defeats the purpose of not-Ash’s
self-sacrifice. If she got her soul
back, who is #5 now?!
The dog? That’s a
pretty bold implication to throw at the religious type.
The girl from the otherwise completely irrelevant intro
scene? That means there’s no reset
button on the Necronomicon. And if that’s
the case, well… MOST. SLACKER. BOOK. EVER.
It’s a few thousand years old and only now collected its five
souls? It took less time to gather all
150 original Pokemon!
4) Eric is actually a
savant
Hire him immediately, dusty old librarian-professors looking
for translators!
This 20-something kid is completely fluent in ancient
Sumerian without any sort of reference material to consult. Also, he has perfect pronunciation of a
completely dead language. He’s like
Rosetta Stone and Rainman had a baby with a hairstyle straight out of
Woodstock.
Seriously.
Hire him.
3) Most of the
characters in Evil Dead 2013 deserved
to die
The Evil Dead was
about 5 twenty-somethings on their way to a vacation to a cabin in the
woods. They were college students. They were wholesome kids. One was a dedicated S-Mart employee with a
glorious chin. They just stumbled into a
bad situation and were horribly murdered by fun-loving Deadites craving some
soul-power. Their only major flaw was
that Scotty was an asshole.
The new bunch of demon-fodder had no such distinction. In fact, they all had character flaws that
serve as death sentences in horror movies.
Mia was a drug addict.
David abandoned his family in their time of need.
Olivia saw nothing questionable in her decision to actively keep Mia away from a hospital
just because she wanted to play the hero and take the glory by medicating her
friend. Her status as a nurse makes
their even more questionable, as she should have had the foresight to realize
that “hey, this failed before… maybe we should involve professionals this time
around.”
Eric set the whole chain of events into motion with his
damnable curiosity and built-in universal translator. When a book is wrapped in trash bags and
barbed wire you leave it alone! It is
not a happy book!
Natalie had a poor choice in friends. Pretty, albeit dumb, little blonde decides hanging
out in an abandoned cabin with the makings of real-world Legion of Doom is a
good idea?
The only one who didn’t deserve a hammer to the face on principle
was the dog. And he’s the only one who
got that exact treatment!
2) Speaking of barbed
wire, what was with the barbed wire? And
the cats?
We’re introduced to a random witch woman and her team of Fallout face-lift friends in the film’s
intro. They set an elaborate trap to
contain a Deadite with every bit of voodoo they could muster.
Candles. A funeral
pyre that inexplicably did not burn down the entire cabin. A posse of largely unnecessary
observers. A shitload of dead cats.
They proceed to use their shrine to animal cruelty to banish
the Deadite and save the day.
Then they proceed to
leave the book out in the open on a table where anyone can find it.
This is almost as bad as leaving a loaded shotgun in a baby’s
crib. Someone’s going to find it, and it’s
not going to end well. But it’s okay,
the old lady wrapped the book in trash bags.
And barbed wire. Surely, that
wouldn’t strike anyone as peculiar. Certainly
not peculiar enough to take a look.
And the cats… nowhere in Eric’s translation of the
Necronomicon did it reference flaying the Humane Society’s entire supply of cats.
If you ask me, the cats had nothing to do with stopping the
Deadites.
The voodoo lady was just making jerky.
1) Evil
Dead II and Army of Darkness
never happened.
I’m going to leave Evil
Dead 2013 alone now and focus back on the original trilogy. Whenever someone first sees the series, the
same question always comes up. Why did Evil Dead II play out like a remake and
a sequel all at once?
The official answer is that Sam Raimi had a story in mind
for all three films, but since another company owned the rights to the images
from The Evil Dead, Sam had to dive
in and quickly retell the story before he could move on. In fact, the “proper” order of the films is
supposed to be The Evil Dead
immediately followed by the 2nd half of Evil Dead II (minus the last 2-3 minutes), then Army of
Darkness.
This is clearly not the case. Because Evil
Dead II and Army of Darkness never actually happened.
In The Evil Dead,
Ash was a reluctant hero. He was a
quiet, respectful kid who hesitated when destiny required him to hold his chin
up and shoot his friends. In the other
two films, he’s a loud-mouthed braggart who thinks little of blowing away his
friends and cutting out his own hand with a chainsaw. This is clearly not the same Ash.
And the key to his character development is all found in the
final shot of The Evil Dead. At the very end of the film, Ash is stumbling
out of the cabin where he is attacked by a Deadite who promptly possesses him. But Ash fights back, struggling to hold onto
his soul.
As such, everything that happens next all takes place in Ash’s
head and shows the internal struggle for Ash’s soul. Consider how the story places out.
Ash replays the events in the cabin, but only with
Linda. His sister and other friends are
mysteriously gone. The Deadite is trying
to isolate Ash while making him relive the painful experience of his girlfriend’s
death by his hand.
The possession takes hold, represented by Ash’s evil
hand. But the real Ash reasserts
himself, removing the hand and fighting back.
Two new people show up at the cabin and Ash is branded as
the villain. The Deadite begins to win
the battle again as Ash questions himself, and now we see a Deadite Ash.
But again, Ash is grounded by his connection to life
(specifically to Linda) and pushes the Deadite out again.
This goes back and forth until the end of the film until the
Deadites manage to complete their goals to unleash their most powerful demon
into the world. We are led to believe
that Ash opens a portal to trap the Deadite, but this is actually not the case. What we are actually seeing is Ash’s final defeat.
When the portal opens, it is not the Deadite
who is defeated. It’s Ash. The portal sucking Ash in is a representation
of Ash being sucked into Hell.
And Army of Darkness takes
place entirely in Hell.
From there, the series goes into a “choose your own
adventure” mode.
Depending on which ending you prefer, you decide Ash’s
ultimate fate.
In the theatrical version, Ash makes it home and goes back
to his life at S-Mart. Though he is doomed
to spend the rest of his life fighting off the occasional advances of the
Deadites and their bid to swallow his soul, he lives. And escapes from Hell.
If you prefer the director’s cut (in which Ash “oversleeps”
and wakes up in an post-apocalyptic world), then you prefer the idea that Ash
is condemned to Hell, never again to escape.
His soul is
forfeit.
That’s actually kind of sad…
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