Long before Sam Raimi signed on to direct the MCU's next Doctor Strange film, and even before he made waves with his Tobey McGuire Spider-Man movies, he was a big name in the horror community for his Evil Dead series. The series began with a 1981 film called The Evil Dead, and there were two sequels as well as a very successful Starz series based on the main character, called Ash vs. Evil Dead. It's known very much as a cult classic, with a lot of very hardcore fans, so one might think that any reboot or remake would be torn apart. When they did release a reboot of the film series in 2013, it ended up setting an incredibly high bar for any future horror remakes.
The original film is set in an isolated cabin in the woods. A group of college students, headed by Bruce Campbell in his iconic role as Ash, are staying at the cabin and they find a copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead as well as a tape recorder. As they play the recording, it starts speaking a string of incantations. They shut it off, but it's not fast enough. Members of the group begin to get possessed, and it's a mess. The film is extremely gory and the premise is simple enough, but the take isn't necessarily what would be expected. Despite the gore and the spooky plot, the film is almost a comedy. It's kind of goofy and kind of campy, and that's part of why people love it.
2013's Evil Dead takes nearly the same premise and flips it on its head. The film is not goofy, kooky, or campy in the slightest. It maintains the gore, it maintains a very similar plot, but it makes these subtle changes that just turn it into something extremely scary and disturbing. It was released as a soft reboot, so it is technically a sequel, but the vibe is a totally different situation. This fresh take is achieved through both reworks of the plot, and subtle changes to specific events in the original film. It's overall a very successful version of the story.
The Evil Dead reboot takes the same premise of young adults in the woods and adds a darker spin on it. In this film, they aren't just there on a holiday, but they're there to stay with main character Mia as she goes through withdrawal from her heroin addiction in an attempt to get clean. They go through the same plot point of finding the book, reading the incantations, and setting off the possessions. Evil Dead really does go through the same motions and hit the same beats as The Evil Dead, but it makes some small changes that go a long way.
Besides the obvious change in plot, Evil Dead also changes the perspective. In the original film, the main character is Ash. Ash is the hero of the series. He appears in every Evil Dead work, including the reboot, and is almost always the character whose perspective the audience experiences. The reboot shifts this, and the majority of perspective of the film is from Mia. Mia is the character trying to get clean, and she's the first and main character who is possessed. Most of the focus is actually put on the characters who are possessed and doing some incredibly messed up, violent, and gory things.
While Mia does sort of turn hero by the end of the film, it's a lot darker of an arc than what's shown in the 1981 version and that change alone really shifts the tone. Evil Dead 2013 also features things the original didn't have, like animal death, to add to a darker tone, and uses technical aspects like color grading to differ from the original. While The Evil Dead 1981 is very bright and colorful, Evil Dead 2013 uses a lot of dark, grey tones.
There are also several specific scenes and events that appear in both films, but are portrayed in a totally different way. Both films feature a scene where the first character to be possessed, in both cases it's a young woman, is attacked in the forest. They're honestly both pretty graphic and a little disturbing, as the tree does sexually assault the characters, but the tone is very different. In the original film, there isn't as much of an emotional connection to the character, as she's clearly a side character. In the new one, it's a lot darker. It happens to the main character, and it's very graphic and gory and tense to watch.
This is a pretty prolonged scene in both cases, but there are smaller things that happen as well. A famous scene in both films features the possessed woman licking blood off of a knife. In the original film, it's portrayed as quite creepy but not necessarily violent. In the reboot, the character actually licks the sharp side of the blade and graphically splits her tongue open.
It's these small changes that completely shift the tone of the movie, and it works so well. It is a rarity for a cult classic to have a remake or reboot that fans of the original latch onto, but this one has that. People who dislike the franchise could also still enjoy this version because it is so different from any of the other works.
In a world with a lot of remakes, especially of the horror genre, Evil Dead manages to stand out and members of the horror community still talk about it. Its take is unique, and respectful to the original because it doesn't try to copy it. It does its own thing, while still paying homage, and that's what makes it an overall very successful portrayal of the classic story. A sequel to the reboot titled Evil Dead Rise is set to start filming this year, and hopefully, the series can continue to set a high bar.