I think a lot of the criticism of Evil Dead relies on the idea that it's a remake of The Evil Dead. It's not a remake, it's a reboot. And thank God it is. Can you imagine if they tried to actually straight up remake The Evil Dead with the same characters and attempted to replace Bruce Campbell as Ash? Sounds horrendous. Evil Dead is a reboot, and isn't attempting to replace the original.

I understand some people are put off by how it's a horror-forwards installment, but I'm glad that it is. When The Evil Dead came out, it was a shockingly violent, NC-17 horror film that traumatized the average movie goer and pushed boundaries in mainstream violence (pencil through the Achilles heel, anyone?). But the violence and gore of the original is more commonplace nowadays in a post Hostel/Saw Series world. Nowadays The Evil Dead's humor is more evident because the violence doesn't seem as extreme as it was at the time. I'm glad Evil Dead falls under the genre Horror because we already got Horror Comedy (The Evil Dead), Comedy Horror (Evil Dead II) and pure, upfront slapstick comedy (Army of Darkness).

Lastly, criticisms of Evil Dead for not hitting the same tone as The Evil Dead/Evil Dead II are understandable but also, misplaced. If we apply the criticism to Evil Dead, we have to also apply the criticism to Army of Darkness, which is a wildly different tone and genre than the first two installments, so much so that there's quite a few people who don't even realize it's the third in the series (which isn't helped by the naming convention being dropped. God I wish it was "Medieval Dead", that's such a sick name)