“Evil Dead” cast member Shiloh Fernandez takes direction from Fede Alvarez between takes of the remake of Sam Raimi’s 1981 cult-classic. (Courtesy of Sony Pictures)
When conversation began to remake Sam Raimi’s “The Evil Dead,” Raimi only had one director in mind to head the project: Fede Alvarez.
Alvarez, a relatively unknown director whose best works come from his short films, recently talked to a group of college journalist to discuss his tackling of the 1981 cult hit.
The film follows a group of young coeds as they venture to a secluded cabin in the woods to help a friend overcome a crippling drug addiction.
However, when one of the group’s members finds a tattered, demonic spell book, evils demons are summoned from the woods and infiltrate their trip.
The resulting action is a limb-cutting, head-turning bloodbath rooted in grit and gore.
Alvarez believes that achieving such grit and gore requires the entire cast and crew to brave the elements and shoot beyond the stage.
“I think my job was kind of like exposing them [cast and crew] to real things all the time. That’s why we decided to make the film in 100% practical and not just CGI and all that.
“It was not just because I love horror films that looks real, but also because I knew that the way the actors were going to be exposed to real things,” Alvarez said.
“That’s why I decided also to shoot the film in a real forest when sometimes with films the first instinct is always to just build it on the stage. And I thought that was going to be a betrayal to the spirit of the original film, so I felt that we had to go and be in the woods and spend long nights in the woods and everybody was freezing to death, but that’s the way I think movies should be done.”
While Raimi may have insisted on Alvarez’ involvement in the remake, Raimi stressed to Alvarez to make “Evil Dead” in a way that would reflect his own vision and not just revamp theoriginal movie.
“Sam was really pushy with the fact that he wanted me to make my own film. Even when I was trying to bring more elements from the original film, he was very insistent with that idea. He was like, ‘Fede, I want you to make your film. This has to be your film,'” Alvarez said.
“He never really forced me to put something that I didn’t want to. They never made me shoot something I didn’t believe in, so they were the best producers you could ask for because they’ve given all the freedom.
“Everything goes down to the fact that he wanted this to be an author film. He wanted this film to come from the writer/director that will have all the freedom to work to do whatever he wanted, because that’s the spirit of the original film; and he wanted to make sure that that translated to this one.”
One factor that Alvarez certainly kept constant from the original to the remake is the film’s over-the-top gore.
Early reviewers of “Evil Dead’ have gone so far to call the film “the goriest movie ever made.” One question that infiltrated the filmmaker’s mind was, “how would the NPA react?”
“Sometimes NPA can drive you crazy by not telling you why the movie is getting a bad rating or the rating you don’t want, and sometimes they’re very precise,” Alvarez said.
“In this case they were very precise with us. They said like there was this, and this and that. They gave us like five notes on the first cut, and thank God we didn’t have to get rid of those. We just had to get rid of five frames or ten frames in some moments.”
Alvarez claimed that the NPA’s guidance actually helped “make a better movie” when it was all said and done.
With box-office predictors claiming that “Evil Dead” will hit just shy of $30 million for its opening weekend haul, it’s safe to say that audiences aren’t scared away from the project either.
“I knew that if I was making a movie I would love, people out there were all going to love it too,” Alvarez said.
“Evil Dead” can be seen in theaters nationwide.
