I’ve walked out of three movies in my life. The first was The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and her Lover. I would have stayed, but at some point Trash had enough and I left with her. Not that I minded much; it never bothered me enough to go back and see the rest.

The second one was just a few years ago. Chao took me to see a movie called Audition at a midnight showing at the Uptown. I had stuffed myself to the uvula at a Brazilian steakhouse earlier that evening, and some time after this sad, intimate living-room drama veered irrevocably into Japanese torture porn, I pretty much passed out in my seat for a few seconds. Which was in the front row of the balcony. Looking back, I’m kind of surprised I made it out of there alive.

Tonight I walked out of Evil Dead.

I’ve been looking forward to this movie for months, if not a year. I loved the original, both as the scariest movie I’d ever seen as of junior high and as the camp classic I saw it as in my thirties. My personal hero Bruce Campbell had been talking it up on his Twitter feed, a friend of a friend did an uncredited pass on the screenplay, and I’m uncool enough to love a good remake. It was win-win.

I invited a couple of friends to go with me tonight, knowing Trash was going to want no piece of this. But then neither did they. Instead Bitter and Febrifge and I went to dinner, called it an early night, and I got home in time to go catch a late showing on my own. Mistake.

Not because I mind going to movies alone, because obviously I don’t. It’s just not a good movie. Or maybe it is; it’s just not for me.

Call me a wuss if you want. It’s not that I was scared; I had no investment in or concern for any of these asshole characters and didn’t give a shit what happened to a single miserable one of them. Plus I knew all the main beats the story was hitting from the original and pretty much where it was going from here, and I was just…grossed out. I realized that sitting through this movie was going to be a straight-up feat of endurance, and for what? Maybe it was the huge dinner again (Mexican this time) combined with my traditional Coke Icee, but when I started feeling physically ill, I asked myself, why am I here? What am I trying to prove? I wasn’t having any fun, and I didn’t want to get sick, so I left. Fuck it.

Sorry, Bruce. Sorry, FOAF. My friends were right. We didn’t need this shit.

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