Riddle me this: what the hell is the relationship between Heroin and the Evil Deads (aka deadites)? On the surface Evil Dead (2013) appears to be a shallow and violent metaphor for addiction and its ripples in a group of friends and family, but what kind of 'friends' would wait until it's past the point of OD in order to intervene in their friends addiction? Mia has a problem. She has put her life into the hands of a group of so called friends who are more concerned with ridding Mia's addiction in order to ease their lives then to legitimately help Mia for her sake. David on the other hand is seeking a legitimate reestablishment of a familial bond that he destroyed by abandoning his family when Mia and his mother was crazy and dying.
The best place to take your social problems is a cabin in the woods used for ritual sacrifice. So, Mia's friends and brother cart her out to said cabin in order to play a game of 'cold turkey' in order to get Mia to kick her habit. Early on we find out that Mia's friends are conspiring to keep at the Cabin even if she wants to go home. David is hesitant, yet eventually gives in when Mia makes a run for it. Enter the Evil Deads. Right when Mia has reached rock bottom she is tangled attacked by a treat and 'impregnated' with a squirmy root-worm that transforms here into an Evil Dead.
The first and most obvious approach to take the 'impregnating' scene is to see it as an allegory for the withdraw systems related to heroin. But it is a little more complicated than that. The withdrawal pull are two fold; the natural elements are in play restraining her and she is confronted with a psychotic mirror image of herself. The idea here being that that heroin pull takes upon natural and transcendental elements at once. Like the original evil dead Mia, like Ash are the only ones to see their doppelgangers. Albeit the characters are struggling with different internal problems. Mia's dilemma is several times more obvious, yet the horror in a sense obfuscates our gaze to the deeper structural elements relating to Mia's subjectivation by her family and friends and what that means in terms of her identity.
Mia is at once the monster of her social network plaguing upon their emotional and fiscal resources, and a victim of witnessing her mother’s crazy death, and the addiction it inspired to sooth it. Republican's like to frame everything in terms of choice as if everyone was choosing from the same pool of opportunities. The homeless, poor, violent, and drug addicted are the way they are because they make a set of choices that directly correlate to the situation they find themselves in. The problem with this of course is that it blames the victim, ignores social responsibility, makes republicans sound innocent, and blatantly disregards structural racism, sexism and classism.
Mia's friends here act in a sense like the republican fear of big government. They step in and block Mia from her natural libertarian state where she can't make the choice to be a addicted or not. The choice of course is pre-framed by the choices that were provided to Mia by the atmosphere she grew up in. Here we are and the intersection between the ideology of the right and left. The pursuit of individual choice or the utilitarian mind best choice for the greatest number of people (or the dictatorship of the popular). It is, of course, in Mia's best interest to kick the heroin addiction in order to live her life more effectively, and happier, but should she be force-choiced into cold turkey by the ultimatums of put to her by her friends and family?
What is Mia's choice? The proper Stalin's purge. In order to cleanse here self from the relationships that oppress her she eradicates them, and in the process is born again. Are the relationships with her friends really that rotten? Yes. Consider that the majority of scenes in which they have dialog are mostly centered on problematizing Mia as something to be fixed, and instead of seeking proper medical services that are trained in detox they narcissistically take it upon themselves to cure Mia. Of what use are friends like these? Mia's purging of her social relationships and the chainsawing-to-the-face of the only part of her that her friends could relate to liberated her from her addiction and emancipated her from those who sought to dehumanize her in a vulnerable point in her life. As Stalin said:
“Death solves all problems - no man, no problem.” Joseph Stalin (Quotesdaddy.com,. 'Famous Quotes By Joseph Stalin | Quotes Daddy'. N. p., 1878. Web. 17 May. 2014.)
Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach.
(BrainyQuote,. 'Joseph Stalin Quotes At Brainyquote'. N. p., 1879. Web. 17 May. 2014.
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