Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Mia, a drug addict, is determined to kick the habit. To that end, she asks her brother, David, his girlfriend, Natalie and their friends Olivia and Eric to accompany her to their family's remote forest cabin to help her through withdrawal. Eric finds a mysterious Book of the Dead at the cabin and reads aloud from it, awakening an ancient demon. All hell breaks loose when the malevolent entity possesses Mia.
The 2013 Evil Dead remake is a technically impressive horror film elevated by its exceptional cinematography and practical effects work, which are genuinely gruesome and well-crafted. However, as a remake it scores low on novelty, largely recycling the Necronomicon premise and cabin-in-the-woods structure without meaningfully reinventing them. The drug addiction framing adds a thin layer of subtext but the plot remains fairly formulaic. Acting is serviceable, with Jane Levy delivering a committed physical performance. The ending is competent and satisfying for the genre but not particularly memorable beyond a well-staged final set piece.