Evil Dead follows five twenty-somethings who, in a last-ditch effort to save their drug-addicted friend Mia (Jane Levy), head to an abandoned and decrepit cabin owned by the family of siblings Mia and David (Shiloh Fernandez), for a weekend of peace and quiet while Mia goes through the withdrawal process. All hell (literally) breaks loose when the friends discover a mysterious Book of the Dead, filled with disturbing illustrations and satanic profanities scrawled in blood. Upon reciting a verse from the tome, the friends are one-by-one possessed by a malevolent force that promises nothing short of an agonizing death for all who have disturbed it.

We went into this with quite a bit of reluctance. The original Evil Dead is a wonderfully flawed, camp-filled exploitation film that wasn’t afraid to laugh at itself. In the age of glossy, stylized horror movie remakes that are only made to profit off of the name of the original, this didn’t look too promising. Even with original director Sam Raimi on board as producer, the previews that were released didn’t tease anything groundbreaking. Not to mention that the 1981 film and its two sequels have garnered a massive cult following around the world. And after last year’s introspective horror/comedy masterpiece Cabin in ihe Woods, the question remained—what could this reboot really offer? An hour and a half later we left the theater thoroughly disgusted, and we mean that in the absolute best way possible. Horror fans around the globe can all take a collective sigh of relief—Evil Dead is absolutely fantastic.

In his first feature-length directing gig, helmer Fede Alvarez takes a different approach to the material, going for a much darker, but still delightfully over-the-top tone. Fans of the original will be happy to see that Alvarez makes numerous homages to the source material, the most prominent being a re-creation of the legendary tracking shot through the woods, intended to be from the point-of-view of the demonic poltergeist.

Alvarez also implements a neat visual trick of introducing all of the prominent weapons of the film early on, as if they were characters. For instance, when Mia’s brother David is using a nail gun to repair a door frame in the first act, the audience is given a sinister chuckle when the nail gun is brought back much later for a more cringe-worthy use.

Levy does a masterful job of handling heroine Mia, and the drug addict sub-plot proves to be quite fresh as the film goes on. When violent apparitions begin appearing near the cabin, none of the friends believe Mia, assuming them to be hallucinations in her withdrawal-ridden mind. A scene in which Mia, her body racked with debilitating tremors, desperately pleads to her brother to leave the cabin, insisting that nothing is what it seems, showcases Levy’s surprisingly top-notch talents.

The one problem that hinders the film is its script. Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues penned the screenplay; the two are not native English speakers, and this shows, sometimes glaringly, in the choppy dialogue. This problem isn’t consistent throughout the entire film, it actually begins to work toward their advantage later on (the goofy dialogue of the possessed was a unique twist that only added to the black humor element in the original), but in the character-building first act, the implausible dialogue can somewhat take the viewer out of the film.

In an age of watered-down, unoriginal rehashes, Evil Dead stands as the shining exception. A dark, unrelenting scream-fest that overflows with gore, Alvarez & Co. have created a film that captures the fervor of its predecessors while also building upon them. The result is one of the boldest horror films in years, which will surely introduce a whole new generation of fans to the Evil Dead saga.