I'll (Still) Swallow Your Soul

Film: Evil Dead (2013)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on my phone.

This is honestly probably the first time I’ve watched an entire movie on my phone. Why would I do that, you might ask. Well, since my run-in with COVID, I’ve decided that I need to get back into the gym. The place I go has very nice treadmills and such; they come with screens that show you wooded paths and the like. You can also stream things on NetFlix and a few other services. But they don’t do Tubi, and I had a hankering to watch the 2013 remake of Evil Dead. It was an interesting experience, watching a brutal horror movie in public. It was also an interesting experience seeing people attacked in the woods while walking on a treadmill with visions of a lovely wooded walk scrolled by.

This version of Evil Dead takes some license with the original story. Of course, it almost had to. The first Evil Dead is essentially the ur-version of a cabin in the woods story (okay, the original Night of the Living Dead might have a little to say about that, but I think the point stands). The plot of the original film is, essentially, five people go to a cabin in the woods. While there, they find recordings of someone reading from an ancient cursed book, and the recordings release demons into the world. So, it’s not like we were starting from a place of rich and deep storytelling.

Off Script: Don't Breathe

Film: Don’t Breathe
Format: DVD from Sandwich Public Library through interlibrary loan on The New Portable.

I think there’s a fine line between what constitutes a horror movie and what gets called a thriller, at least in my mind. To me, “horror” as a genre implies some element of the supernatural or at least the unnatural. Thrillers are often horrific movies, but for me, they are based more in the real world. This is not a hard and fast rule. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, for instance, is purely a horror movie despite having no supernatural element. With a movie like Don’t Breathe, we’re riding that line as well. My gut tells me this is more of a thriller than a horror movie, but there are certainly elements of horror here.

If you think this suggests that there’s nothing supernatural going on in Don’t Breathe, you’d be correct. We start with three young thieves. These are Alex (Dylan Minnette), Money (Daniel Zovatto), and Rocky (Jane Levy). Alex’s father owns a security company, which gives him information about their homes and security information. The three break into the house, shut down the alarm, and steal. To keep themselves out of trouble, they don’t steal money and they never steal more than $10,000-worth of goods. Break that number, and it becomes a felony offense. Once they are done, they set off the alarm and Money fences what they’ve stolen.