TriStar

Happy families, as Tolstoy informed us, are all alike. But every Evil Dead family is evil and dead in its own way.

Or something like that. In any case, it's an observation that, to my surprise, is supported by Evil Dead, director Fede Alvarez's fresh yet faithful sequel/remake of Sam Raimi's 1981 indie-horror classic The Evil Dead.

Alvarez is treading on sacred (which is to say, accursed) ground here, but he does so nimbly. Raimi's familiar ingredients are all present: the five early twentysomethings and the remote cabin; the infernal tome and demon's-eye rush through the forest; the Dutch-angle camerawork and dark humor; the priapic foliage and living burial; the shotgun and the chainsaw; the slicings, burnings, dismemberments, and other sundry castigations of the flesh. But all have been diligently reshuffled, like playing cards in a chthonian game of Clue. (The girlfriend! In the bathroom! With a jagged shard of mirror!)

Alvarez opens with a creepy, cunning prologue featuring a decidedly Whedonesque reversal, before settling in for the main affair: This time out, the five victims-to-be are not out in the woods for recreation, but rather to support the effort of one among them (Jane Levy, from TV's Suburgatory) to kick her heroin habit. It's a sharp conceit—her friends are committed to forcing her to stay there in the cabin no matter what; her inevitable possession by forces unknown is initially mistaken for withdrawal—but Alvarez is wise enough not to carry it too far. Once the stabbings and the "you're all going to die tonight"s and the unlicensed oral surgeries begin, all questions of addiction are properly relegated to the back burner.