Evil Dead (2012)

Cold turkey and demonic possession – two great things that go great together? Uruguayan youtube prodigy Fede Alvarez’s revisitation of Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead story is overworked and laden with backstory, tortured childhoods, personal journeys, and plans that really should have been made clear long before arriving at the house in the woods. The torment of youth is drawn so naked and concerned as the kids set about just saying no to drugs that the Necronomicon’s eventual intrusion into the teenage angst-fest feels positively jarring.

Then it’s down to bloody business. As well as Raimi’s startling vision of cackling-corpse insanity,  Evil Dead has a stab at invoking The Exorcist – which even that film’s own sequels failed so spectacularly to do. After exploring all this to mixed results, it spends its second half trying to make its mark with a 12 bucket gore rating. You may want to shower afterwards.