The lead stars in “Evil Dead” are all unknowns and they all play dull, stupid absolutely dumb characters. Someone finds a book of evil curses and reads aloud a chant that should never be recited. As maybe expected, this starts the strange happenings among them, with one of them speaking in a demonic voice, obviously possessed. Instead of leaving right away, they stay put and just let the evil spirit from hell runs amuck dismembering, stabbing, killing them one by one, all shown in excruciatingly horrible detail like a nail gun shooting all of them, piercing their flesh and bones.
Nothing is really original in the plot or all the goings on. They just multiply all the gore factor, told without even any shred of dark humor for some kind of morbid relief. Wish we could sympathize more with the characters, but they all act like imbeciles and morons that whenever something bad happens to them, instead of feeling sad for them, you find yourself saying: “Buti nga! Tanga!” At one point, we’re even rooting for the spirit that possessed the girl to kill them all right away so the movie would end soon and we can go home.
We love horror films that scare and shock and jolt us but I guess after watching too many of them, we’ve really become jaded, desensitized and callous that nothing shocks or scares or jolts us anymore, especially if the movie is as stupidly made as this one. And before we hack off our own arm just to be able to escape from this dreadful garbage (like what James Franco did in “127 Hours” even if our arm wasn’t pinned by anything except by a sense of futility), we decide to walk out on the movie.
