'Evil Dead' should have stayed dead

Dismembered limbs, blood spraying everywhere and plenty of gore. Throw in a little demonic possession into the mixture, and that is a typical horror movie these days. Being a fan of horror movies, early previews sparked my curiosity of "The Evil Dead," even though I was not very familiar with the franchise.

While the original "The Evil Dead," released in 1981, may have been innovative for its time, the newer version is simply a rehash of a story that has been overdone.

The new movie does engage the audiences' attention more quickly than the original, with a father being forced to burn his possessed daughter alive as she hurls obscenities at him. This serves as a nice little introduction to the following events that will take place in the film.

After that, however, there is not much to make it stand out as a horror movie except for the neverending gore.

The plot starts off quite simply with a group of college friends looking for a getaway in a remote cabin in the woods, and unsuspectingly release a dormant evil.

Where the new movie deviated from the original, which made it less enjoyable, was that it tried to weave in too many subplots that did not add much to the story.

Shiloh Fernandez played one of the lead roles as David, a young man who was lured to the getaway by his friends in a ploy to wean his younger sister off of her drug habit.

David has been away from his family for years and missed the death of his mentally ill mother. The back story of his mother's death, as well as his sister's drug addiction, did not enhance the story at all. It would have been better served to leave it like the original without trying to add multiple storylines.

The original film also explained the evil in the woods better than the newer version. In the original, the evil is summoned by the characters listening to an audio recording of the prior inhabitant of the cabin, a professor who uncovered an ancient Sumerian text that contains spells to unleash supernatural beings during an archaeological dig.

In this remake, one of the characters is drawn to the text for no apparent reason, and can somehow translate the book and understand all the spells it contains in another somewhat-useless subplot.

Aside from the poor minor plots, the characters themselves were not very strong - the lead in particular.

Fernandez's character was rather weak compared to his counterpart in the original, Ashley Williams, played by Bruce Campbell.

David did not really react to the situation much and despite the numerous supernatural events occurring, he still refused to acknowledge anything, cuddling with his girlfriend and monotonically telling her everything was okay, while she was drenched in blood and missing several limbs.

Compare that to Ashley, the lead character in the original, who took charge of the situation right away and knew exactly what he was up against; Demons from Hell.

Speaking of demons, the whole possession aspect of the horror genre is overdone in general. While this "Evil Dead" is a remake, the original can stand as is without any tinkering.

It seemes like every horror movie these days has to include a demon who takes control of a human host and begins to wreak havoc. The demon then proceeds to engage its victims with immature banter that comes across more as annoying and something you would expect out of a small child, rather than some all-powerful creature from the beyond.

Unfortunately, good horror movies are dead, and great plots have been replaced with blood, guts and infantile demons.