Evil Dead

I’m not going to pretend that I was outraged when a remake of classic 1981 horror The Evil Dead was announced because I only saw that movie for the first time about six weeks ago. What I will say is that when I did see it, I loved it and suddenly hoped that a remake wouldn’t do what so many other horror reboots/remakes do and cock up and completely miss the point of the original. Evil Dead ends up somewhere in the middle, remaining recognisably true enough to the original while growing its own branches and taking its own directions. It fails to match the original in terms of entertainment or laughs but is much scarier and is possibly the most stomach churningly disgusting films I’ve ever seen.

Differing slightly from the original, five friends converge on a cabin in the woods in an attempt to get one of their number off drugs. Believing the secluded cabin is the perfect place to cure their friend’s illness they are unaware that it also has a history of the occult and is home to a demonic presence. One by one the group are forced to deal with the demons, leaving them either possessed or gravely wounded.

Cloverfield

There were few films in 2008 that gave me such a rush of excitement and exhilaration as creature feature Cloverfield. The brain child of J.J. Abrams, Cloverfield follows a group of young New Yorkers as they battle to survive the onslaught of an unidentified thirty story monster that tears through the city on a May evening. The production was shrouded in secrecy and a viral marketing campaign matched that of any film in producing a sense of confusion and anticipation for the forthcoming movie. The monster’s design especially was kept a closely guarded secret until the movie was released theatrically.

Coming back to the movie five years after I initially saw it and a couple since my last watch, I found that my excitement had dissipated quite a lot and my interest in the story is much lower than it previously was but I still thought the movie was a fantastic 80 minutes of animation and mayhem, topped off by some highly accomplished effects and fantastic creature design.