Don't click play unless you like it gory.
I'm torn when it comes to re-makes, reboots, sequels, prequels, "side"quels and spin-offs. True, most of these movies are shameless cash grabs that don't even take quality into account. In Hollywood it has become truth that if a movie makes X amount of dollars, a sequel is pretty much guaranteed. Since films cost so much to make, studios really like working with a known property. It still won't guarantee box office success, but at least they can head into a project knowing that there is an audience for it. Of all the above options, sequels are perhaps the least distasteful--plenty of bad sequels are made, to be sure, but if you like movie #1, there is at least some chance future installments have something to offer you. Reboots seem the worst. If you aren't familiar with the fairly new term, a reboot is a remake, but a remake of a film that exists within recent memory. It happens often with foreign movies, as a good concept is white-washed with familiar, English-speaking faces, but has begun creeping into our own films. "Spiderman 3" fail to meet expectations? Start over with a younger Spidey. Christopher Nolan finished with "Batman?" That's fine, Batman begins, again. Along with the recent trend of stretching novels into two or even three film epics, it screams "give me your money, talking meat-vessels."
So right in the middle you have your traditional remakes. Are they, at least, justified? Certainly, you can make a case that the older the film the more forgivable it is to remake it. While I am fine with the argument that a well-rounded and critical movie watcher should take the time to seek out films in black and white or with subtitles, it falls short in two regards. First, not all of these movies are readily available. Secondly, the bulk of the film-going audience doesn't meet those criteria.
On the other end of the camera, who is to say that a director shouldn't get to explore somebody else's world. To step away from film, Gregory Macguire's take on Oz ("Wicked" and its sequels) is vastly different than Baum's original vision. Just because he began with a setting and some characters that he changed drastically, does that make him unoriginal? Most remakes aren't shot-for-shot, and I think the conversation surrounding a remake's worth has to start with the director. Does he/she have anything new to say?
Even if we agree that some remakes have merit, though, it becomes a bit dicier when the film is held up as a classic. While I enjoyed both movies quite a bit, the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake was held to a different standard than the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes." A director attempting to remake "Lady Hawke" would receive less pressure than somebody trying to re-do "Back to the Future."
What all this boils down to is that they are remaking "Evil Dead." While it doesn't have anywhere near the stature of Michael J. Fox's time travel fantasy, it is certainly a horror classic. When I heard that they were going to make a new one, I recoiled. I'm not even one of the biggest "Evil Dead" disciples (Having started with "Army of Darkness" and working backwards,) but even I knew that was sacrilege. Even when the original director agreed to produce the remake it wasn't on my list of interesting films. Even when the star of the original films gave this movie his stamp of approval, I didn't really care. When the early response to the trailer came back from Comic-Con (or some-such other con, who even can keep track these days) I was still hesitant.
Today that trailer became widely available. As I sat in front of my computer waiting for Youtube to load, I was still ambivalent and leaning towards disinterested. A minute and twenty seconds later? I CAN'T WAIT. "Evil Dead" has one advantage that other horror films from that era didn't, I guess. It was funny, and intentionally so. So when the directors chose to go headfirst into horror horror, real, R-rated, brutal horror,l it quickly became apparent that while the particulars--teens, woods, cabin, Necronomicon--were the same, they had something new to say. Definitely going to be keeping an eye on this one.
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