a review of 鬼玩人崛起

HOOPTOBER ORIGINS 2.0 NIGHT TWENTY-NINE: I'll give this one a lot of credit for managing to make something that fits within the Evil Dead mythos (at least aesthetically) without completely aping the original movie or its many remakes. Some very clever misdirects in the first few scenes that pay off in interesting ways later on. I think the thing that's going to really divide people on this one is how they feel about watching the movie's central family unit -- presented sympathetically as an embattled working-class single mom and her gender/neuro-diverse teens -- basically get fed right into the meat-grinder (metaphorically and otherwise) with no real salvation or redemption on offer. It's gut-wrenching in the same way as the 2013 remake, but without same distancing irony as having it set in the same old cabin.