I knew this was going to be a controversial, even unpopular Evil Dead the second we smash-cut from a man running a Deadite over to an ass twerking in a club. It's not that it's just mean-spirited with its violence, Sebastien's POV is Very French. It's street French patois, complete with rap, club culture, and dramatic monologues about smoking. I don't mean this as an insult, it's just very dry and sarcastic and takes little seriously - which is why his tone was a bad fit for what's basically a feminist domestic violence drama. I lived to see a feminist Evil Dead movie! I'm so happy! Why aren't we hiring women to write and direct these again? In any event this one desperately needed an audit by a stern third party because with one more rewrite it might have been great. But it is not. Sigh.
The Good
* The mother's arc effected me in a way I didn't expect. She is stuck in a hell that isn't of her own choosing long before Will's death; put there by her father's tragic, failed attempt at protecting them all, glued there by her sister's death (which is unnecessary because it effects nothing) and then her mother's spiritual death. Her only joy in life are her two sons, one of whom failed to launch, the other who launched but has translated his father's anger into ugly abuse. No wonder she follows the false promise to her given by the Deadites that she'll continue to have purpose and a life if she just gives them the dagger.
* Some of the humor worked. My favorite moment was them playing Alice and Will's wedding song at the funeral and then doing extreme telenova zooms, only to be brought back to reality by the coffin falling off the trolley.
* The kiss was fantastic and another example of dry humor.
* Thya was a great red herring heroine, and the best of the Deadites. She had a quality like Linda Blair in Reposessed. Yes, this is a compliment.
* I liked Alice as a protagonist. I like that she spent very, very little time cowering in the corner. I suppose the movie's breakneck pacing helped this,. And I'm laughing at us getting a blatantly anti-motherhood film after Rise. YEAH FUCK THEM KIDS! SECOND EVER WOO GIRL HEROINE!
The Bad:
* The prologue and the post-credit scenes are both painfully stupid and naked attempts from the studio to set up continuity with Burn and get asses in the seats. It didn't work well enough to support these choices. Enough with this random yahoos dying and it meaning nothing in the prologue! I'm not impressed! I don't care! And what, suddenly Ellie is a serial child murderer? The incantation was enough to turn her from ashes into a Deadite? It was blatant, insecure pandering all the way.
*When your pace is so breakneck you never take a breath, sometimes that's good for the pacing, sometimes it causes Bad Giggles. That's all I've gotta say!
*The lore additions make next to no freaking sense at all. We're set in the same world as Rise, this uses the same infection point as Rise, with a Deadite using the same incantation that infected everyone in Rise. And suddenly the only thing that REALLY kills Deadites is a Kandarian dagger we've never seen before? I know this was an attempted adaptation of Evil Dead 2 lore, that KDs DO kill Deadites, but it makes no fucking sense when our last Deadite died via woodchipper, Ash has killed multiple Deadites with Boom Headshotting, etc. And we're in the same world as Original Recipe Evil Dead via that clipping. Saying Deadite infestation is just a matter of willpower is also a huge insult to all the characters who've come before, especially because we just killed a bunch of kids in the last movie. It's just a flu! you can shake it off! I laughed my ass off at Old Pappy Deadite To Be coughing his way into the grave.
* The movie CONTRADICTS ITS OWN LORE MID-STROKE. After all the heavy establishment that bodily fluids will turn you into a Deadite (saliva does it twice - Susan and Polly, a touch/scratch twice (Edgar and the mid-credit lady), presumably Joseph gets it via inhaling Thya's blood, Incantation takes out Will, Thya gets it via penlike stabbing), Alice inherits more plot armor than Ash ever wore. She got stabbed by a piece of glass thanks to a Deadite, takes Thya's blood to the eye, and is stabbed in the freaking ear with a pen that already had infected blood on it AND NOTHING HAPPENS TO HER. Also if only a dagger can kill these super special Deadites, how was Joseph able to bludgeon Thya to death with the top of a dishwasher?!
*We had a lot of good or intended laughs, and then the bad laughs. I couldn't stop cackling at them showing the McGuffin Pen over and over again. WE GET IT SV YOU'VE SEEN EVIL DEAD.
* None of the Alzihmer's related humor was funny at all. I got one laugh out of any of it and that was from Polly sitting there listening to the family fight and firmly saying Thya shouldn't have stolen her money.
* What was the point of the ankle thing? Was it symbolic about how Alice was being restricted by connection to the family? Why did it lead nowhere?
* Will the Vecna CGI skeleton Deadite was the lamest final antagonist we've had since the abomination. He was not scary.
* Actually not one second of this movie scared me. It was gross and tense, sure, but I was barely grossed out and never scared.
* None of the Deadites are particularly memorable except for Thya. I know they wanted Pappy Headshot to be memorable, but nope.
* None of the dialogue is super memorable either. I suppose 'don't turn a deaf ear' is going to be the catch phrase from this one?
* Joseph's "to be a man you must taste blood" arc is a total waste of time.
* If you're going to make me sit through a dog getting violently killed and turned into a Deadite, at least have the dog do cool shit. This one just rehashes Cujo. Why not have it spew invective?
