For way too much of its runtime, this re-envisioning of The Evil Dead is kind of an indifferent shrug of a movie. As much as I love the original Evil Dead, there's a hell of a lot of room for improvement, and the pre-release press definitely suggested that this would be the right kind of remake. If you're bracing yourself for yet another rant and rave about horror remakes.well, you're not gonna get one here. One by one, it sadistically disfigures and dismembers Mia's friends and family until it's swallowed every last soul, infusing it with the strength to at long last fling open the gates of Hell. Some demon has invaded what was once her body and is wearing it like a meat suit. Before much longer, Mia's not there anymore. Everyone else writes off Mia's erratic behavior - scalding herself with third-degree burns in the shower, incoherently ranting about the woods attacking her, pointing a fucking shotgun at her brother - as a junkie suffering from withdrawal. This backwater cabin is a gateway to Hell, and something on the other side is clawing at that door. The cruel irony is that Mia is the only one who sees what else is going on. Mia has her closest friends and her estranged older brother within arm's reach to lean on for support, and it just so happens that there are a couple of medical professionals in this lot to help her dry out. There's little to distract her from getting better.
Of anything else around for seemingly hundreds of miles, she'd at the very least be free from temptation.
Previous stabs at interventions didn't take, so several of her closest friends hatch a different scheme this time around: drag Mia to her family's hopelessly remote cabin in the woods. I mean, sure, the EMTs or whoever were able to revive her, but death makes for a hell of a wakeup call. Mia (Jane Levy) didn't just hit rock bottom this longtime junkie died.