Review: The Best Horror Of The Year Volume Five edited by Ellen Datlow

When news of Night Shade's near demise came, I found myself checking every day for news, dreading the possibility of some books not seeing publication. Foremost on my mind were Laird Barron's The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, Peter Rawlik's Reanimators, and Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year Volume Five.

I've been a longtime fan of Ellen Datlow. I think she has good taste, and almost always puts out solid anthologies. When Night Shade started publishing a Best Horror of the Year series with her at the helm, I picked up the first volume and have been faithfully following ever since. Some volumes are stronger than others, and some detractors point out that some stories would be better labeled as “dark fantasy” than horror. Label wars aside, a Datlow anthology always promises to be an interesting read.

The Best Horror of the Year series was saved along with Night Shade, and Volume Five saw publication recently. The anthology consists of Datlow's annual and in depth Summation of horror fiction and non-fiction of the 2012 year, followed by twenty-eight stories and poems.

I enjoyed this anthology, and loved how for this go-around the stories she chose were all rather short, which allowed for her to offer a vaster selection than usual. The stories within ranged from amusing, to outright horrifying.

Some favorites include:

Jeffrey Ford's A Natural History of Autumn is a modern take on a creepy monster from Japanese folklore. The story has some twists and turns, and made quite an impression on me, leading me to order a couple of Ford's collections upon finishing it.

The Callers by Ramsey Campbell has the author's brand of “comedy of paranoia” taking center stage. A young boy staying with his grandparents finds himself running away from some angry peers. Taking refuge at his Grandmother's bingo night seems like a good idea at the time, but quickly becomes anything but a good idea.

Proving he is one of Britain's strongest voices in horror, Gary McMahon has two excellent stories in the anthology. Kill All Monsters follows a weary woman on the run with her dangerous man and their daughter. The woman finds herself torn between fear and love for the man, who believes some everyday people are actually monsters that only he can see. He is constantly driven to rage, and compelled to kill these “monsters”. The story does a good job of leaving thing just ambiguous enough. I couldn't help but be reminded of the film Frailty, which saw a father/son team killing people who they thought were demons in disguise. As much as I enjoyed Kill All Monters, McMahon's second offering, Some Pictures in an Album, is the stronger of the two, and one of the scariest stories in the anthology. The majority of the story is made up of descriptions of pictures as the narrator flips through a photo album. The photographs begin to come together to paint a horrific picture, and as soon as I finished I found myself turning back a few pages and reading it again. An excellent exercise in building dread.

Jay Wilburn's Dead Song is a story that I found really intriguing. I didn't find it to be scary until the end, yet the story paints a unique picture of a semi-post-apocalyptic America. During the zombie apocalypse, certain people traveled through the dangerous land to certain parts of the country in order to record regional music. The narration of the story is a voice-actor doing a recording for a documentary about one of these music hunters. It's definitely an interesting premise, although at first I felt it was a bit repetitive with the descriptions of all the fictional musical styles of this time period. This wore off though, as I found myself getting into the "mud music" mystery.

Margo Lanagan's stories are always a delight to read. Bejazzle follows a man during an unhappy point in his marriage. Starting with a bizarre encounter with a strange, semi-Goth girl cult on the train, the story sees the man and his wife attending a party on a beach, where the man is tempted to cheat on his wife.

Bruce McAllister offers up a nice coming-of-age horror story set in a small Italian village with The Crying Child.

Nathan Ballingrud's Wild Acre is just as powerful a story as it was the first time I read it. The author is extremely talented at bringing to life flawed, emotionally damaged working class men and women. In this one a man is wracked by guilt at failure to save his friends.

2012 saw the release of Richard Gavin's At Fears Altar, one of the best single-author weird fiction collections in recent years. Choosing one story from the bunch for inclusion in a Best Horror of the Year anthology must have been a task, and although the majority of the collection found it's way onto Datlow's long honorable mentions list, The Word-Made Flesh was the story she settled on for the anthology. Richard Gavin is a well studied scribe of classic weird fiction, and his talents are on display in a story following a man trying to help his friend contend with a power that is way more than he can control.

The collection closes with two of it's most powerful stories. Lucy Snyder's Magdala Amygdala is grotesque, and there were moments when I literally had my hand to my mouth, cringing. The basic gist of the story is that there is a disease that people react differently to. One type of patient gets a thirst that can only be quenched by blood, while Type 3 patients can only properly get their nutrients from brain matter. The main character is a Type 3, struggling to live with her craving. A must read that will please even the most jaded horror fans. Closing the collection is Laird Barron's Frontier Death Song, a metafictional story featuring some of Barron's fellow authors as characters (a fictionalized version of Stephen Graham Jones is the story's antagonist). The story features many of the author's trademarks: a strong noir voice, tough guys facing overwhelming horrors, and high octane, no holds barred violence. I greatly enjoyed this yarn when it first appeared online, and was glad to see that Datlow chose it for the volume.

Overall, another fine addition to Datlow's annual series.

Review: Beneath The Surface by Simon Strantzas

Simon Strantzas has become one of the leading writers of weird horror, and along with Richard Gavin, Ian Rogers, and a few others he is proof that Canada has much to offer in this genre.

Beneath The Surface is Simon's first collection, and the fourteen stories found within each stand strong as an example of his dark talent. Several of Simon's influences can be seen throughout the stories, and include such famous names as Lovecraft, Ligotti, Aickman, and Cronenberg. His love for the numinous is also quite plain to see, and it is no surprise that the author of this book went on to edit an anthology about thin places.

Many of the stories feature loners and outsiders as protagonists, often caught in a bleak world. A Shadow In God's Eye opens the collection. The protagonist feels empty, and in searching for spiritual satisfaction comes in contact with a shady religious group. There's many good things to say about this one, and Simon paints a picture of a bitter man who experiences a few horrific moments. It Runs Beneath the Surface also features a withdrawn main character. The man has a career in social work, which has drained him and left him a cynical husk of a man. His anxieties about the city's filth start to manifest when a new client comes to the office. Both of these tales were instant favorites.

The Constant Encroaching of a Tumultuous Sea is a surreal story that is reminiscent of a nightmare, which is what it was based on according to the author's afterword. A Thing of Love features a reclusive writer who is still grieving over his dead mother. Hints dropped about an incestuous relationship gives the story an uncomfortable feel from early on. When the writer receives a mysterious package, things only get creepier.

Off the Hook, another instant favorite, revisits the theme of a filthy city. The city is plagued by constant rain and foul odor due to a garbage strike. A grumpy librarian finds a strange notebook, and starts to hear a ringing in his ears that just won't go away. Combined with a few other surreal scenes, the story has a terrifying climax. More to Learn is a short tale concerned with a man rebelling against the creature within him.

Another favorite, Behind Glass, combines Lovecraftiana with Ligotti corporate workplace horror, making for an unsettling story set in a creepy office building in a creepy part of town. Following is In The Air, a beautifully dark tale of a grieving widow looking for closure.

You Are Here takes place in a fictional, abandoned version of Toronto's PATH. This version of the underground "shopping mall" is very atmospheric. It reminded me of the story of Orpheus, in that the main character enters the underworld on a quest. This man's quest to fix himself only leads to terror in what amounts to be a highly effective horror story. The Autumnal City is about a man in a city where everything continues in the same manner. The man seeks freedom, and has glimpses of a mysterious woman that he thinks can lead him to being free.

The Wound So Deep is a revenge story featuring much body horror. Another favorite, this one follows a man who is picked on by coworkers, and at their insistence embarrasses himself by asking out the female member of the group. He is hurt so deep that his hurt begins to manifest itself in a physical, vicious way. Thoughtless continues with the body horror. A girl who finds herself incapable of feeling agrees to try a radical, mostly untested new drug. After her injection her arm begins to change and she enters a state of delirium. I loved the ambiguity of the story. Was the woman really experiencing true events and seeing past the veil into the true world or was she just having a delusional episode?

Leather, Dark and Cold involves a book that opens the door to so much more. An impressionable student helps a man he admires steal the book, but is horrified by the events that occur. Years later, the man comes back into his life. Drowned Deep Inside of Me is an interesting weird tale and a good choice to close the book. The city is gripped by an unnatural darkness, and a troubled man waits through it with his neighbor and her daughter. Not everything is explained explicitly, but from hints and events it becomes clear by the end that the narrator has a deep darkness within him as well.

Strantzas is one of the modern masters of the weird horror tale. His first collection explores urban horrors, and the horrors within us all with just the right amount of Ligotti bleakness and cosmicism to satisfy any horror reader. Like the best horror, everything is not always explained and ambiguity is sometimes used quite often. An essential volume to any weird horror collection.

Review: Revenants by Daniel Mills

Daniel Mills is a writer who is fast becoming a favorite here at The Arkham Digest. In previous reviews of A Season In Carcosa and Fungi, I found both of his stories (MS Found Dead in A Hotel Room and Dust From a Dark Flower) to be among the finest in either anthology. Also recently I picked up a copy of The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23, and seeing that Mills had a story published in there I read it straight away. The Photographer's Tale was everything I had come to expect from the author; another unsettling period piece with wonderful prose. In the last couple years Mills has hit the scene running, and has been putting out stories that read like they've been written by a weird literature veteran.


As much as I've been enjoying his short fiction, imagine my delight when the opportunity arose to review Revenants, his first novel. As Mr. Mills pointed out to me in correspondence, Revenants was published last year by Chomu Press, and while pulling in some good literary reviews, it seemed to lack some exposure within the genre community. That's a shame too, because Revenants deserves to be read by any fan of weird, historical fiction.


Revenants is a story about Cold Marsh, a colonial town in 1689 New England. Typical of most towns of the time, it is strictly Puritan. The novel follows a few characters and their experiences when a third young lady, Ruth, mysteriously goes missing from the isolated town. The story mostly follows a few characters: Ruth's father James, her betrothed Edwin, Edwin's father William, Ruth's mother Constance, and the reverend Isaiah Bellringer. Each character is flawed, and has his/her own secrets. Many of them are filled with regret, and what they perceive as their past sins (some rightly so) haunts them.


The plot follows the men as they split into groups and strike out into the dark wilderness in search of Ruth. Their individual past deeds haunt them as a mysterious force in the woods grants each of them separate visions, causing all of them to have a crisis of a faith. The plot takes a bit to get started, taking it's time to establish the characters and their relationships between each other. When everything finally comes together in the end, and certain revelations are made, the novel ends exactly the way it should.


The character's themselves are difficult, and Mills is accomplished at making each of them interesting, if only a few of them likeable. William Brewer is perhaps the most likeable throughout the book, and the only one who seems to truly seek redemption for his past sins. James has made some wrong choices, but his downfall is mostly the way he handles dealing with them. Edwin is perhaps the character who elicits the biggest change as we see him make some of the same mistakes some of the elders have in their past.


The weird elements of the book tend to be more subtle, and while there aren't many scenes of hair-raising horror, the mood and tone of the book remain eerie and melancholy throughout. I found the biggest horrors of the book to be the people themselves, and the Puritan way of thinking as opposed to the weird elements. The attitude of the townsfolk and how easily some of them are led is quite scary, and Mills drives the point home throughout the novel.Their stifling, rigid attitude about sex especially, which is so completely different from today's view that modern readers such as myself find it downright disturbing. The ease in which the people of the time would do terrible things at the behest of their firebrand religious leaders is an aspect that I find especially terrifying.


Revenants has a good, if simple plot, and interesting characters, but where it truly shines is the language Mills uses. The back cover describes the book as "a poetic meditation on the colonial landscape of New England, the hills and wilds of a vanished country." This description is accurate, and Mills is quite at home taking his time describing the landscape. He paints a beautiful, eerie portrait of a town in isolation, surrounded by deep, dark woods and stagnant, rotting bogs. In reading it I could picture it perfectly, could even smell the forests, and I enjoyed his evocation of place just as much as seeing the plot come together.


Although the book tends to move at a somewhat slow pace, and seems to take awhile for the plot to kick into gear, I enjoyed every page. Some might find it a bit too slow for their liking, maybe a bit longer than it should be, and skimpy on the weird supernatural elements, but I found that these few small criticisms are just that - small nitpickings and nothing more. This novel didn't need to be as overtly weird as his short stories, because the important things are the characters themselves, how they dealt with regret, and how they got along through a dark time in history. Never have I seen the harsh coldness of colonial times depicted so strongly.


Revenants is a moody novel, and is all fog and melancholy. Anyone looking for a strange, literate, gloomy and atmospheric book will find a lot to like. I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone with an interested in colonial period pieces. There is just enough weird and horror there to satisfy genre readers, and not too much there to scare off non-genre readers. With this novel Daniel Mills further cements himself as a great new voice in the world of the weird. I for one can't wait to see what he does next. 

Review: Never Bet The Devil & Other Warnings by Orrin Grey

The first thing apparent while reading any story from this book is how much fun Orrin had writing them. His interests are apparent, without even having to read the About Author page. His love of old horror film, the occult, comic books, Lovecraft, and Mike Mignola's works is readily apparent.

Some of his stories have a comic-book or B-movie feel to them, making for easy, fun reads. And fun is the key word here, because although these stories are horror, and deal with horror elements, they lean toward the fun end of the spectrum as opposed to the terrifying (see: Hellboy, Beetlejuice).

Another wonderful thing about this book that warrants mention is the inclusion of author notes. At the end of each story are notes from the author which explain the inspirations and ideas behind the stories. I've always loved when short story collections or anthologies included something of this sort. Sometimes it offers clarification on some story concepts, but often I just find it interesting to see what the authors thought process was when creating a certain story.

Never Bet The Devil & Other Warnings is Orrin Grey's first collection, and contains ten stories. The shortest one is one page, while the longest one is novella length.

The title story, Never Bet The Devil, is a short description of a twist on a common carnival contraption. It was written for a contest to get into an anthology of fictional bizarre items, and serves as a nice way to set the stage for the collection. If anything it makes me wish to see the item in a story!

Count Brass, the second story of the collection, toys with the trope of the musician selling his soul to the devil. A woman keeps encountering the name Count Brass in reference to her musician grandfather, and starts to figure out that maybe he didn't come across his musical success in a legitimate manner. My favorite part of this story was Count Brass himself, as Orrin took a common figure and really made him physically unique.

One of the best stories of the collection, and one I encountered previously in The Book of Cthulhu II, is Black Hill. Black Hill tells the story of an oil field atop something that is much more complex than simple oil.  Orrin took the idea of oil being made up of organic matter, and really ran with it, adding a liberal dose of cosmic horror into the mix.

The Devil In The Box is another entertaining story. A man obsessed with a cult painter acquires most of his art collection, his old house, and a mysterious box said to be the artist's inspiration. The story is told from the point of view of his partner watching their relationship disintegrate.

Another stand-out story for me was Nature vs. Nurture. The story takes place in a world where ghouls are a reality, and they are hunted as animals. When a young one is found, the narrator shows mercy and takes it in, attempting to raise and train the creature. It's a great story.

The Barghest was my least favorite story of the collection. I think the narrative style used in the story weakened it, although the plot and story ideas were pretty solid. I always struggle with a story narrated by someone talking to someone else and explaining things that the listener already knows, while constantly pointing that fact out ("But you already knew that, didn't you"). I thought the concept of being able to be "infected" with lycanthropy from the skeleton of such a monster was really cool, and I wonder why it hasn't been explored more often.

One of my other favorites of the collection is The Seventh Picture. As a film love myself, I always love a story that mixes horror/the weird with film, and Orrin does it so well here. The story itself is told in the found-footage format, and follows a documentary film crew as they explore the abandoned mansion of an old horror film director in search of knowledge on his incomplete, missing final film. Orrin's film buffness is on display here, and where I found the narrative style in the previous story lacking, I found it to be completely on point with this one. Also this story was the closest one to pure horror in the collection. The story should be of special note to fans of Chambers' King in Yellow stories.

On the heels of the creepy The Seventh Picture follows the light-hearted The Reading Room, another great story. The age old concept of using a book to summon something from beyond is turned on it's head here, as the protagonist must keep reading books in order to keep the same something imprisoned. As clever as this twist is, the love story that is the backbone of this story makes for a nice counterpart to the dark Seventh Picture. Would be a great story to kick off an anthology of weird romantic comedy.

Nearly Human is another top-notch story built around another clever idea. The story serves as a nod to old haunted house stories, and comes together quite satisfactory in the end.

As good as all the other stories are, it's the powerhouse novella at the end that stands above all the rest. The Mysterious Flame is an impressive homage to Mignola, and an immensely entertaining read. The story itself is rather pulpy, and would seem completely in place in a comic book (for the record, I'd love to see a comic version done, so someone please call Mignola in to illustrate it). Orrin weaves a tale of a golem searching for more and the obsessed lich who's out to capture him. The story is the most complex in the book, shifting viewpoints between Barnabus the golem and Joy, a young girl who somehow got stuck as the lich's human "servant". The story features plenty of action, humor, and some genuinely creepy moments. Definitely the highlight of this fine anthology.

Orrin Grey should be very proud of his first collection. The stories cover a nice variety of weird territory, and do so in a very light, pulpy, and fun manner. This reviewer plans to keep an eye on this author, because if this collection is anything indicative of things to come, then we readers are in store for some spectacular things.

As a side note, Orrin Grey has not only begun to establish himself as a writer, but also as an editor. He co-edited Fungi with Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which I dubbed "my choice for original anthology of the year".

Review: Fungi edited by Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia

 I’ve said before that original anthologies are usually a mixed bag, and for the most part that remains the case. Therefore, it’s a special thing when one comes out that manages to be great throughout. Innsmouth Free Press, a Canadian “micro-publisher”, has already produced some quality anthologies. Historical Lovecraft and Future Lovecraft both have a spot on my bookshelf, and were quite satisfying. Fungi, their latest anthology, stands as their best work yet.

The brilliant cover by artist Oliver Wetter blends strangeness and beauty, and gives an idea of what’s to be found within the pages. Fungi itself is such an interesting species, and days could easily be spent reading about different types that are strange enough on their own without having to be fictionalized. Editors Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Orrin Grey wisely saw the potential of such a theme, and have compiled together a variety of tales. The stories themselves range from horror to fantasy. Some are dark, some are silly, some are chilling and some are just plain fun. The paperback edition contains twenty-two stories and a poem, while the deluxe hardcover edition includes three extra stories and ten black and white illustrations by Bernie Gonzalez.

Some (there are many) stories that I particularly enjoyed:

Hyphae, by John Langan, opens the anthology. It’s a good, solid horror story like I’ve come to expect from this author.

Lavie Tidhar is an author who writes beautiful short fiction. The White Hands reads like an excerpt from a weird encyclopedia detailing a mushroom world. Although not a typical, narrative story, it’s quite captivating.

Camille Alexander is an author that I’m not familiar with, but His Sweet Truffle of a Girl showcases her talent. The story is about a man on a “fungal submarine”, on a mission to win over his heart’s desire. It’s a weird, sad tale.

The next story, Last Bloom on The Sage by Andrew Penn Romine, is a fast-paced weird western. This could be one of the weirdest westerns I’ve read, as it seems to add steampunk, magic, and Lovecraftian creatures into the mix. Romine writes a rip-roaring train heist filled with action and strangeness, yet hinting at a much larger world. This is one of my favorite stories, and I’d love to see more stories set in the world Romine has created.

Another favorite is The Pilgrims of Parthen by Kristopher Reisz. It’s a beautiful, chilling tale of a special type of mushroom that causes shared hallucinations. Reisz manages to write a tale that could also work as a metaphor for real life drug addiction, and shows just how obsessed and dependent people can become. Parallels can be seen to Lovecraft’s A Shadow Out of Time and tales by Clark Ashton Smith. All in all, one of the best stories in the anthology.

W.H. Pugmire’s Midnight Mushrumps (my second favorite story title) is typical of Pugmire’s work. The prose is dreamy and decadent and the story is quite haunting. Any fan of weird fiction or eerily beautiful prose should mark Pugmire as a must-read.

No weird, fungal anthology would be complete without a story by Jeff Vandermeer. The author/editor is, without a doubt, the King of Fungi. Corpse Mouth and Spore Nose revisits his fictional city of Ambergris (which is explored in his previous brilliant works: The City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch). This short story involves a detective coming to the city of Ambergris on a job, but finding more than he bargained for. The story is weird at its best with some disturbing visuals and elements of body horror.

Goatsbride, by Richard Gavin, is another beautifully written story. Although I found the fungus element to play quite a small role, I loved this story. It explores primal lust in a village reminiscent of a religious, conservative settler town. Gavin is highly talented, and balances fluid prose and brilliant imagery to weave a tale that is not easily forgotten.

Molly Tanzer and Jesse Bullington show what’s possible when two impishly warped minds come together. Tubby McMungus, Fat From Fungus (favorite story title – obviously) is easily the weirdest, funniest, most memorable tale (tail?) in the anthology. Anthropomorphic animals, scheming nobles, fungus, and merkins come together in a story that will not soon be forgotten. Fungal fun for the furry in all of us.

Where Dead Men Go To Dream by A.C. Wise is a dark tale of anguish and loss. There is some beautiful imagery to be found in a tale of mushrooms and dreams.

Daniel Mills recently caught my attention with a brilliant story in A Season in Carcosa. With Dust From a Dark Flower, Mills uses fungus in a more traditional weird horror style. Mills is quickly becoming a new favorite of mine.

Nick Namatas brings us a tale of an urban housing project’s garden, and the hope it brings to the neighborhood before taking a darker turn in The Shaft Through the Middle of It All. Namatas paints a very convincing urban picture in a stand out tale.

Go Home Again showcases Simon Strantzas many talents. The melancholy story is full of beautiful, dark imagery, coming together for a hopeful ending.

And ending the anthology (for the paperback readers) is a powerful tale by Laird Barron. Gamma is a disturbing, spine-chilling tale. It works as an example of how literary, powerful, and brutal Barron’s stories can be, adding another example of how he is the Cormac McCarthy of the weird. A perfect closing story.

There are several other fun stories as well, Julio Toro San Martin spins a steampunk yarn, Lisa M. Bradley writes an intriguing environmental tale where not everything is as it seems, Polenth Blake pens a hilarious little ditty, Ian Rogers brings back his recurring paranormal investigator Felix Renn in a supernatural noir, and Chadwick Ginther brings fungus into the realm of Sword and Sorcery.

Also of note are the three additional stories available in the hardcover edition. Catherine Tobler writes a poetic, gloomy tale of a ruined earth, while J.T. Glover and Claude Lalumière bring light-hearted, funny tales to the table. The three stories together are totally worth the extra money.

Fungi is definitely an anthology any fan of the weird should get ahold of. There is just so much offered in terms of content that it is entertaining throughout. Also, the hardcover is worth dishing out the extra dollars for. Not only would I dub this anthology “highly recommended”, I would even go so far as to say it’s my pick for best original anthology of the year. 

The book can be bought straight from the publisher HERE.

The Evil Dead Remake: Will it Deliver?

With the remake of The Evil Dead on the horizon, now seems as good of a time as any to talk about one of the best franchises that horror film has to offer.  

Fans have been clamoring for years for a fourth installment to the Evil Dead franchise, the last film of which premiered just over a decade ago. Instead of getting another sequel featuring Ash (played by the B-Movie king Bruce Campbell) hacking through monsters with his chainsaw hand while spewing one-liners, fans are instead going to be treated to a remake of the underrated first film of the series. Fans seem to be split between disappointment (an Ash-less Evil Dead film being the main cause) and excitement.

The oddest thing about the Evil Dead franchise (I guess I can’t call it a trilogy anymore?) is it’s inconsistency of tone. In the first film, five friends head to a cabin deep in the woods where they awaken an ancient evil. What follows is a series of gruesome moments: a book bound in human skin is found in the basement, a woman is raped by trees which cause her to be a host to some sort of demon, possessed individuals are disposed of by bodily dismemberment, Bruce Campbell is thrown into every bookshelf in the cabin, and ending it all is a disgustingly beautiful stop-motion scene of decay. Despite the hilarity to be found in some of the movie’s situations (seriously, he is thrown into every bookshelf) the tone is pure horror; the tree rape is still high in my list of most disturbing movie scenes.

Then comes the sequel, which isn’t even as much a sequel as it is a reboot. I have to admit to some head scratching as a kid, the first time I watched this one. Here the film opens with Ash, driving to the cabin with Linda (who doesn’t make it through the first one). What follows is a ten minute rehash of the first film, with a cast of two instead of five.  It’s also apparent from the beginning that the tone has taken a severe shift. This isn’t a horror film, it’s a comedy horror and while this is not a bad thing, I was off put the first time I watched it, as I was expecting terror instead of laughs. Although the film contains a few creepy moments, and will make you jump once or twice, it’s not really scary at all. The possessed are goofy, and laughable, instead of vulgar and disgusting as in the first film. Instead of possessed being dismembered while spewing blood and some sort of milky substance, Evil Dead 2 has Ash doing battle with his own hand, and laughing deer heads. This tone continues into Army of Darkness, which also works as a direct sequel.  The highlight of the two later films is Bruce Campbell’s portrayal as Ash. In the first film he was bland, but it seems he was reworked to be a badass, chainsaw-wielding king of one-liners. He truly is a riot to watch, and without him I don’t think the latter films would have found much success at all, and success they have found, as they remain the more popular films in the series.

So what can be expected of the new entry into the franchise? From the teaser it is very clear that this one will not offer many laughs. Don’t expect to see Ash fighting some of his usual enemies like his possessed hand, or mini versions of himself. As a matter of fact, don’t expect to see Ash at all. The entire group seems to have been re-worked, and now features a female in the lead.  The lack of Ash seems to be the main source of disappointment for fans, all of whom have hungered years for his return. Others (myself included) are looking forward to the film revisiting its grisly horror roots.

Although I love all of the films, I’ve always held a fondness for the first, and while it might seem blasphemous to Evil Dead fans everywhere, I’d even go as far to say the first was my favorite. As much as I love horror comedies, sometimes I just prefer my horror to simply be horror. I want to be frightened. I want to be disturbed. I want to have trouble sleeping the night after I watch the movie. Watching the first film left me glad I wasn’t going on a weekend getaway to the woods, while the latter films left me with a head full of fun quotes.

So with the redband teaser now online, fans can get their first taste of what it’s going to be like. Expect to see another tree rape scene, and although the glimpse of it we are shown is tiny, I have a feeling it’s going to be even more disturbing this time around. The setting looks nearly identical to the original film. As for as the possessed, they look even more disturbing. It seems someone thought it was a good idea to add masochism to the mix, and as many times as I’ve watched the teaser, my gut still clenches with the final shot of the girl sawing her tongue in half with the razor blade. A copious amount of gore is definitely a requirement that is being fulfilled.

So what’s the final verdict? Horror remakes are typically pretty awful, although over the years a few have managed to be good, and a few have even been better than the original (The Thing, The Fly, Invasion of the Body Snatchers). When I first heard of the remake I just kind of shook my head, and muttered something to the effect of “why don’t you just leave good films alone?” My trepidation decreased when I heard that Raimi and Campbell were signed on as producers. The two of them being involved seemed like a sort of safety net for the film. With the redband teaser now released, I now feel actual excitement. As much as I’d love to see Ash return and do his thing, it’s great to see the remake honoring the first film, which always seemed sort of “left behind”. And as long as a chainsaw and the necronomicon are both involved, it can’t be bad.

So what are your thoughts on the Evil Dead remake? Are you excited, disappointed, or a mixture of both? Comment below!