Evil Dead (2013)

MUST SEE: Fede Alvarez's Evil Dead (US, 2013) - Produced by Raimi’s Ghost House company at Sony TriStar and filmed in Michigan and New Zealand, Alvarez’s version has the benefit of studio funding, an attractive and professional young cast and gruesome special effects well in advance of those available to the original team.  Like Marcus Nispel’s remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – but unlike recent ham-fisted reduxes of everything from The Amityville Horror and The Hitcher to The Stepfather and A Nightmare on Elm Street -  it’s a solid, effective, even imaginative job mounted with thought and care, delivering enough grand guignol shocks to satisfy a contemporary multiplex crowd on a weekend night, if not to fulfill its poster promise ‘the most terrifying film you will ever see’. RATING: 8