And here it is:

What do you think? Tall order? Too tall? We'll find out in April 2013 how nice the emperor's new clothes really are...

Photo credit: Yahoo! Movies

(via The Daily Blam)

(Video link) But seriously, this trailer for Fede Alvarez's (and Sam Raimi's and Bruce Campbell's) The Evil Dead is not for the faint of heart. Is it great? Yes. Is it creepy and gory and violent? Yes, times one hundred. And it also delivers. (via Sony Pictures on YouTube)

I wasn't entirely happy about this new Evil Dead movie in the beginning, especially when I heard Sam Raimi was not going to direct, nor was Bruce Campbell going to be Ash. But then we all found out that Raimi and Campbell would be directly involved in its production and hand-pick its director, Fede Alvarez. It still didn't feel quite right. But after this panel, even if it still doesn't feel like an Evil Dead movie, that doesn't mean it's going to be a bad movie. In fact, I think this is going to be a great movie.

Let's start out by acknowledging how effortlessly and robustly Bruce Campbell owns a large room. Most of the people in the IGN theater had been there for hours (present company included), securing their seat for a number of spotlight panels that day. I don't doubt that some of us were there just to see Evil Dead, especially if we were going to get a wholehearted endorsement of this movie from Ashley J. Williams himself.

After a long standing ovation, Campbell sat down and told us all that we, Evil Dead fans, were "rude, crass, impatient people," and that if we wanted him to "crown" Jane Levy as the new Ash, "I will do it my fucking self." He and Levy discussed the casting process, Levy revealing that Campbell was either trying to talk her out of it or make sure she was prepared to take a Raimi-style beating from Alvarez. (Because what is an Evil Dead movie without its director abusing its lead actor? Not an Evil Dead movie.) Later, he and Alvarez also defended the hiring of Diablo Cody to brush up the script. Alvarez, who pointed out that he wasn't American, said that Cody's work on the script was really to make sure the young American characters sounded right. But also, Campbell added, "she won an Academy Award." So, there's that.

And even though Cody's job was to give the characters some silly quips amongst the horror, it was made very clear to us that this Evil Dead was going back to the very first movie, which was straight-up horror, and not the second or third movies, which were more "splatstick," a phrase coined by Campbell and Raimi. Before the video footage, we saw the full image that I teased above, which is of Jane Levy as a Deadite. Here is the full picture, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly:

This is really the first glimpse of the movie that we were getting, and it was pretty impressive. (As in, the audience made audible sounds of shocked approval.) But it was about to get better, because the footage we were shown had a palpable impact on the audience. This movie is not messing around -- it looks terrifying. We were sideswiped by this thing.

We have the Necronomicon. We have an idiot reading the Necronomicon. We have tree rape. And we have chainsaw. We have a new Evil Dead movie, and it is here to swallow our souls.

After giving a gaspy fan five dollars following a kiss on her hand, Campbell offered a final benediction:

"We don't want to screw this up... I know a lot of you were pissed... I will accept all of your collective apologies."

Legend has it that Bruce Campbell then dropped the mic and vaporized into thin air that day, but I had to scurry away to be on another panel, so I can't say for sure if this happened. But I'd like to believe it did.

Photo credit: Entertainment Weekly

Nicely done, Nerd Alert Designs. Nicely done. The shop also has dresses inspired by Star Wars, comic books, and even Rainbow Brite.

This dress comes with a chainsaw pocket [The Mary Sue]

But since Campbell is not Bay, he uses much different words and actually takes the opinions of Evil Dead fans into consideration. (Read: Is less of a dick about it.)

Here are his words:

[I]t’s going to take a bit to get the ‘Evil Dead’ fans behind it. We know we’ve pissed a lot of them off. We appreciate that and we appreciate their anger and their zeal, but the only thing we want to impress upon them is that we didn’t screw it up. This is going to be just as memorable as [the original] Evil Dead without being the same movie...

I’ve seen it already; I think it’s definitely fabulous.

Campbell goes on to say that we need to consider this movie to be a member of the Evil Dead family, but not one who is trying to commit patricide and take over. It's a brand new movie with brand new people who are battling the evil demons and monsters we know and love, and we should welcome them into the fold. If you need even more reasons, there's this: fancy special effects!

The nice thing is the film looks beautiful. The effects are 10 times better than we ever had access to and the actors are all better than we were in 1979.

Plus, none of them knew what they were doing on the first movie! While it's true that gives it a certain charm -- or as Campbell puts it, "amateur enthusiasm" -- imagine if it had a budget. Shiny, shiny money to make it super-duper shiny! I can think of one person who is probably excited about having a little extra money on hand, and that person is Ted Raimi. Now they can hire a professional to sweat buckets in a rubber suit and spin from the ceiling like a demented piñata! But don't be surprised if he shows up somewhere, maybe getting hit in the face with a branch by his brother Sam, in an "off-camera" cameo.

Speaking of cameos, I'm going to put my money on one featuring Bruce Campbell. Why? Because rather than just say he wasn't going to do one, his words were, "I’m not at liberty to discuss that," then more emphasis on this being an entirely different story from the first movies. See, why not just an emphatic "NO"? It would make plot sense to not have him there, but it would make zero spiritual sense to have any breed of Evil Dead movie without the Grand Poobah himself.

Bruce Campbell has seen the new 'Evil Dead' and says "It's fabulous"! [Bloody Disgusting]

Well aware that there is a great deal of fan concern over the new Evil Dead movie coming out next year, Sam Raimi spoke with MTV about how it not only has his seal of approval, but it is going to be actually scary and worth your time. Seriously. You have to believe him. Here are some reassuring quotes from both him and his co-producer Bruce Campbell, who is similarly begging for everyone to believe him on this one:

From Raimi:

"I just think [director] Fede Alvarez has really made a great horror movie," he said. "It's scary. The actors are great in it. It's really gut-wrenching, real low budget and intense."

Geek Tyrant also submits this older quote from Campbell, which paired with Raimi's makes this a little easier to deal with, despite the lack of Campbell (like adding Stevia to a bowl of lemons that might also have dirt in it):

You can expect to have a damn scary horror movie. There's no Ash character -- The Evil Book is going to torment a new set of kids, so it's a remake, or a re-imagining or ... a re-whatever word you want to use. It's going to be re-scary.

In other words, Raimi and Campbell need to know what they need to do to make you trust them on this because nothing seems to be working.

Sam Raimi says new Evil Dead movie is gut-wrenching [Geek Tyrant]