★★★1/2 Created three decades ago by Sam Raimi (and not a little help from his friends the Coen brothers as well as the wacky Bruce Campbell) the Evil Dead series was born as a mix of utterly bloody supernatural horror and wacky comedy. Raimi’s versions came closer to The Three Stooges than to Lovecraft, while these “reboots” (this is the second film about the next-generation cursed book) focus more on horror and applying the theme as a metaphor of another thing. Here the issue is motherhood and the cursed book triggers an appearance of monstrosities that give speed – almost to the point of vertigo – to the development of the action. At this point, the film is close to its origins: in fact, it is remarkable that the director Lee Cronin understands what has always worked around this franchise and updates it with elements that are typical of the language of this time. Although there is another detail that is worth emphasizing: the fact that the novelty of Evil Dead (which gave a turn to the genre that lasted for a long time) is not so new anymore. And we entered, then, in that current trend of “fan service”: to make a good impression with the fans in order to be able to propose something new. The “franchise” cinema, dominant today, seems to require that not-so-gentleman’s agreement.
