The Evil Dead 2013

[Thelogan]

Tree rape confirmed.

 

This remake may proceed.

[Keth]

 

[Iambaytor]

I saw a lot of things to love there. God, please don't let this suck

[Keth]

Interview with Fede Alvarez

 

Quoted in the spoiler since it contains quite a few.

 

Evil Dead is iconic. What's the tone this time out? What can we expect?

Fede Alvarez: It's definitely something that comes out of the first one. You have to understand this started with Sam [Raimi] asking me if I would remake Evil Dead. And of course, freaked out because Evil Dead is so many different things... I locked myself into a room with one of my best friends back home, we wrote the movie together. And we spent a lot of time asking what Evil Dead meant to us [personally].

I watched Evil Dead when I was 12. I was going through all the horror I could grab, I remember going to the video store and asking for something "real." And the guy gave me the Evil Dead VHS. When you're 12, you're not supposed to see that. It was the same feeling like the first time I discovered porn, I knew I wasn't supposed to do this, but I did it anyway. I went home, my parents weren't around, and it was a very, very, very bad call. I shouldn't have watched that movie. I was 12, too young. I was traumatized by it. It was a super violent and scary movie.

Coming back to now, with my friend writing the script, we thought, "That's what we have to do now. Keep what we really remember." Then the last time I saw it was about 6 years ago, I didn't want to re-watch it, I wanted to remember the key ideas, what has stayed with me all this time? So that's what we put in the new one. Basically what we pitched to [Raimi] was let's try to make the scariest movie ever. Something that is gross, something you feel like you're not supposed to watch, something that is violent, something that will scare the shit out of you. And that's exactly what Sam wanted to make.

What level of gore will we see in this movie?

Fede Alvarez: It is gory, that's for sure. There is a line that Sam always talks about, the line between horror and comedy. You go too far and everyone starts laughing, but if you hit the right place everyone is scared to death. We were always standing on that line. And sometimes gore can be very funny, guts falling out blood splashing all over the place. It's not that kind of gory film. It is has a lot of blood. A lot of blood. I would come back home every day after shooting covered in blood... It is a very gory film. People had to cover themselves in plastic bags because there was blood and splatter everywhere.

 

Full size

How much CG is in the movie?

Fede Alvarez: We didn't do any CGI in the movie. There's no CGI in the movie. Everything you will see is real, which was really demanding. This was a very long shoot, 70 days of shooting at night. There's a reason people use CGI it's cheaper and faster, I hate that. We researched a lot of magic tricks and illusion tricks. [Like] how you would make someone's arm disappear.

There's a moment where a girl goes through her arm with a kitchen knife — spoiler alert. And we knew since day one the camera would start wide, she goes for the knife, you see her arm, she starts going for it. And you think they're going to cut away at any moment, but we don't. She just goes for it and screams and the arm breaks and falls. So we really pushed the boundaries there, trying to create those illusions... It has a particularly bloody ending. The last scene is just...I want it to be the bloodiest scene, ever. And I think it is.

[What about the raping tree?]

Fede Alvarez: This is not a classic being remade by a big studio, it's still his film. It's the guys from the original. I didn't write one scene and [the producer] asked "where's my raping tree?" So *types on the table and whistles* raping scene, there you go. But it has to be way more terrible than the original.

There are a lot of iconic shots in the original, will we be seeing any homages to Rami's camera work [you can see the low tracking shot through the woods in the beginning of the trailer]?

Fede Alvarez: Not really, well, yes some. More so hints to the original. Sam asked me why I didn't put in this shot from his movie and stuff. And I said, "Well, that's your movie." I have my pride. I'm a director. I'm not going to go and recreate some other director's vision. There were some moments where we shot and it looked just like the original and I felt like I had no soul, I was miserable. But I didn't put most of those scenes in the cut, and thank god Sam backed me up on those. But there are some, of course the camera will fall to one side at some point. But it's because it's the way you tell the story of five guys in a cabin. You have to make the place look bigger and crazier, otherwise it's just a room.

 

[Keth]

Bruce Campbell talks the remake. He even says there's no humor in the first one

 

Interview in the spoiler

 

 

How would you compare this new Evil Dead to the prior Evil Dead films?

Bruce Campbell: Remember, there's no humor in the first one. The first one is a melodrama. This is much back to that. There are no jokes. There's no trash-talking, it's an old-time, old-school horror movie. But the mythology is the same — there's the Necronomicon, you're fucking with the wrong book. The rules are the same with regards to bodily dismemberment — you have to burn them alive or chop them up.

How would you describe Mia (actress Jane Levy), the new protagonist in Evil Dead?

Bruce Campbell: She's just a regular person like Ash was. She's struggling with drug addiction — the character, not the actress — and she's going to dry out with a group of friends at her old family cabin. She hopes to get herself better, but the problem is the possession business starts when they find this nasty book that they should've left alone. People think she's just going through withdrawal, and that lets it get a little too far along the way. By the time they figure out what's happening, it's too late. It's a similar tragic story of five twentysomethings trying to survive the night.

How would you characterize the special effects for this film?

Bruce Campbell: It's mostly special effects make-up. The digital stuff is only to help when we need it. It's not the reason we're making this movie. It will all feel very real. You know, nail guns to the forehead. Don't forget, the whole first movie was a disaster. It was supposed to be six weeks and it went twelve weeks. It was the coldest winter on Tennessee's record. We came from Michigan to escape the winter, and Michigan ended up having one of the warmest winters on record. It was just a ridiculous, endless nightmare shoot.

Similarly, what sort of visual style does director Fede Alvarez employ here? [Ed's note: Here's our NYCC interview with Fede.]

Bruce Campbell: I don't want to give the style away, but know that Fede has made it his own. He's not imitating Sam and never intended to. Fans of Evil Dead should feel comfortable watching this movie, it's like putting on a comfortable, terrible pair of shoes. Fede's treating it not like an MTV superstar. It's not masturbatorial. By telling this story in an adult fashion — when the wacky shit happens — it's more horrifying than if he treated it like a big joke. Sam Raimi handpicked the director here. We were all over this movie like a cheap suit. We're as concerned as the fans are about not doing something to piss them off. We want to make two more of these. I want dueling trilogies! But you'd have to talk to Fede about that.

Were the cast Evil Dead fans coming in?

Bruce Campbell: They knew about it, but they were too young. None of them were born when we filmed Evil Dead.

Did you happen to see the tribute to Evil Dead in Cabin in the Woods [spoiler photo here]?

Bruce Campbell: Nope, I haven't seen it. But we accept that!

Finally, if you were to remake

in the style of this new Evil Dead, what would it look like?

Bruce Campbell: Well, I've read a sequel, but I didn't like it, so I'm not doing it. The things I didn't like are the things [Bubba Ho-Tep director] Don Coscarelli did like. It was tough to reconcile, so I suggested to Don, "Absolutely go make the movie." I wish him nothing but the best. Filmmakers have their own sensibility, but I didn't want to hold him back, with no malice.

The Evil Dead hits theaters April 12, 2013.

 

[Iambaytor]

I think what he means there is there's no overt humor, because the scene where the jaunty vaudeville music starts playing and blood starts shooting everywhere is straight out of the 3 Stooges, it's just more hellish and nightmarish.

 

There's also a few lines that show the Ash of the sequels, it's actually kind of interesting to look back because Ash is the "funny guy" character, the one that usually dies first or second so him making it to the end was just kind of out of left field.

 

 

EDIT: Also, I really fucking want to know what it was him and Coscarelli parted ways on over Bubba Nosferatu. SOMEBODY JUST FUCKING TELL ME!

Edited October 19, 2012 by Iambaytor

[Thelogan]

The hell does Campbell know? He's an actor, and actor's are idiots. He might be a cool actor, but that just makes him king of the idiots. We must learn to accept these things.

 

The humor in Evil Dead is just dark instead of slapstick.

[Keth]

 

nothin better happen to that dog

[Thrizzle]

[Thrizzle]

Mm'kay, currently rewatching the first one after a decade or so. It's still great.

 

There's way more slapstick than I remember. This is a silly ass movie, it's just not as overtly silly as the other two and it has more MOMENTS of serious tension. It's clearly toeing the line between being a horror movie and making fun of them. "Pure horror" my cunt.

 

Also, Ash is the worst kind of naive, frustrating, horror movie idiot. He only deserves to be the survivor girl because all of his friends were bigger idiots.

 

And these aren't zombies. Not because of any silly "zombies Я scients only" reasons, but just because they aren't zombies. They're demons using human bodies as vessels, and the people don't even have to be dead.

[Panch]

zombies Я scients only

[Keth]

y'all been hanging with pete?

[Iambaytor]

I'ma go put the trailer for Night of the Demons in the zombie trailers thread.

[Thrizzle]

I was just perusing old threads (as is my custom), and found this one, which I'd kind of forgotten about.

 

That movie deal the young man in question scored turned out to be Evil Dead.

 

That's all. Carry on.

[Keth]

Ah nice! Regardless of how much "in the spirit" of Evil Dead this may or may not be, we should get a pretty awesome movie out of this.

[Keth]

 

[Mr. Hakujin]

I second Mr. Vega.

[Keth]

[Keth]

Just saw this and liked it well enough, but now i see why yall want the humor. It was way too serious. Dont go in with the expections the promos are blowing out of proportion and youll have fun. Small post credits sequence too.

[Mr. Hakujin]

Just saw this and liked it well enough, but now i see why yall want the humor. It was way too serious. Dont go in with the expections the promos are blowing out of proportion and youll have fun. Small post credits sequence too.

I almost saw it this weekend but opted for Jurassic Park instead. Looks like I made the right call. I'll try and catch a matinee maybe. I was kinda hyped for this, but now consider my expections curbed.