Or is it Ash ... ley?

While she may have acted opposite trees in her last two films (enchanted ones in Mirror Mirror; Taylor Lautner in Abduction) it probably wasn't quite the same. Bloody Disgusting has it that British-born actress Lily Collins has been cast as the lead in the remake of Sam Raimi's iconic Evil Dead.

Aside from changing out Bruce Campbell's role for a female lead, the Evil Dead remake looks like it will hold with a story line that stays fairly true to the original. Once again, five friends go to a cabin in the woods (no, not that Cabin in the Woods) and find the Book of the Dead, accidentally unleashing hell. There is no word, as yet, whether the film will include original elements of sexually predatory vegetation, or retro-fitting of missing limbs with tool shed appliances.

While re-imagining the film with a female lead is an interesting choice, it also feels safer in a way - rather than try to re-create or top Bruce Campbell's amazing, hilarious Ash, the film makers have made a choice so wildly divergent that it actually inhibits direct comparison. Very tricky!

Also tricky is the project as a whole: taking a small-budget, original indie horror flick (that managed to spawn the career of one of the most highly-regarded directors of our time) and turning it into a big-budget studio project while maintaining any of the quirky charm of the original is a big job. And while they've pulled together an interesting team (Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez of Panic Attack), the fact that Diablo Cody worked on the script is continually presented as a good thing - was I the only one who saw Jennifer's Body? (Maybe, actually.)  Hopefully this foray into the horror genre is a bit more successful. It's just impossible to think of an Evil Dead remake without the backstory of the original, best told in Bruce Campbell's autobiography If Chins Could Kill. Then again, even as a pessimist and a fan of the original, I'm still going to see the remake ... which may be the point of remakes altogether.

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