I guess this is the first ‘Cabin in the Woods’ style horror flick I’ve watched since joss whedon so thoroughly deconstructed the genre last year. His ‘Cabin in the Woods’ did such a number on the tired tropes of the platform that I wondered if there was any point in making another one. Like, ever.

This sideways reboot of the class Raimi ‘Evil Dead’ franchise does not attempt to answer that question. Instead, the film proceeds blithely along as if nothing changed anywhere.

The truth is, there is something primal about movies about ignorant kids, cut off from all help, surrounded by the wild and unfamiliar, hunted by dark forces they cannot comprehend. Even when the PBS part of your brain knows better, the ancient lizard is moved. The terror of being away from the tribe when it all goes down cuts right down to the bone.

The setup is a mere formality, dispensed with quickly and without much fanfare. A team of pretty young people converge on a creepy shack deep in the forest, oblivious to the strange history of the place. Their mission is to hole up and help one of their number kick heroin. Within a few hours things have gone Pete Tong in serious and extremely gory fashion.

If you’re a fan of the genre, it’s got some real moments of vintage squick and disquiet, but it all seems a bit too serious, as if the ‘Dark Reboot’ virus kicked off by the Batman franchise somehow infected this movie as well.

The premise is simply a little too dumb to be heavy. Let’s say you encounter a book bound in human flesh, filled with desperate marginalia imploring you not to read the contents aloud. What do you do? If you answered “say it out loud immediately”, then you deserve what you get as much as these dimwitted millennials do. The best you can hope for from me as an audience is benign amusement at your plight, and that’s all Raimi required.

This movie asks you to take the situation more seriously, to care about the addict’s struggle and the impending pulping of the cast in a way it simply does not deserve.

For genre completists. Otherwise, just spend an evening with the much cheaper and more satisfying ‘Evil Dead’.