Despite the negative reaction to the scene in the original The Evil Dead, 2013's Evil Dead remakes the scene. While Fede Alvarez's version of the sequence is far less graphic than the original, many Evil Dead fans questioned the creative decision behind why the heavily-criticized sequence remained in the remake. However, it seems that neither Fede Alvarez nor Sam Raimi had anything to do with the presence of Evil Dead's most controversial scene in the 2013 remake.

Why Evil Dead 2013 Kept The Tree Scene

According to an interview with Gizmodo, 2013's Evil Dead director, Fede Alvarez, alleges that he was forced to rewrite the script to include the infamous scene, by an unknown producer. Alvarez claims that the unnamed producer tactlessly asked him "where's my raping tree?" upon reading a version of the 2013 Evil Dead screenplay without the infamous sequence involved. Despite Alvarez's later comments in the same interview that the scene "has to be way more terrible than the original," it seems that the director worked hard to make it far less exploitative of actress Jane Levy than in The Evil Dead.

Unlike the framing of the original The Evil Dead tree scene, Jane Levy's Mia is not explicitly sexualized in the scene. There is no nudity either in the 2013 Evil Dead tree scene. The focus of the tree scene in 2013's Evil Dead is not to titillate or simply shock the audience, but to emphasize it as a possession (Cheryl is not fully possessed by the Deadites in The Evil Dead until a later scene). However, the bones of the original The Evil Dead tree scene are still there in 2013's Evil Dead, and thus, it is hard to view the sequence as anything other than a gratuitous rape scene.

Evil Dead 2013 Should Have Cut The Scene (Because Of Raimi)

In the years since the release of The Evil Dead in 1981, director Sam Raimi has gone on the record as saying that he thinks of the inclusion of the tree scene as "[unnecessarily] gratuitous and a little too brutal." When Raimi remade the original The Evil Dead as the opening sequence for requel Evil Dead 2 in 1987, the scene was cut entirely, with Linda (Denise Bixler) becoming possessed in a POV shot. In order to stick with Sam Raimi's wishes, the 2013 remake of Evil Dead should have cut the infamous tree scene.

Source: Gizmodo