Let's begin with a warning: the following trailer is not safe for work. It's also not safe for people who have just eaten lunch, or people who ever wish to have pleasant dreams again. Like, ever again.
Though the Hollywood remake cycle is often a confounding, frustrating beast, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell's upcoming reimagining of their beloved "Evil Dead" franchise looks to break that cycle, judging by the new red-band trailer released this week. Veering away completely from the goofball tone of the original cult classic, director Fede Alvarez's "Evil Dead" remake instead leans on bone-chilling horror and stomach-churning gore, and the red-band trailer is here to prove it.
The new vision of "Evil Dead" sticks to the original's premise: a group of teenagers go to a cabin in the woods and unwittingly use a mysterious book to conjure up ancient evil. That ancient evil is on full display in the red-band trailer, which opens with a harrowing conversation between Mia and David, siblings played by Jane Levy and Shiloh Fernandez.
"David, please, please — you have to get me out of here," Mia tells her brother. "You don't understand: there was something in the woods, and I think it's in here with us now."
Those concerns are validated by a series of haunting images: Mia tangled up in a tree (in a scene sure to mimic one of the most iconic moments from the original "Evil Dead"), her friend Olivia receiving a face-full of demonic vomit, and another character disfiguring her own face with a shard of glass. And that's just scratching the surface; as the trailer pushes on, even more disturbing imagery comes to grisly life, pushing even the most steel-stomached viewer to the brink of nausea.
Produced by the original "Evil Dead" team of Raimi, Campbell and Robert Tapert, the new "Evil Dead" remake hits theaters on April 12, 2013.
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