The Evil Dead review.
It’s been over forty years since Ash Williams and The Evil Dead came into our lives. Director Sam Raimi’s original movie may not have the comic beats you love from later entries…but it’s still one hell of a horror movie.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
The Evil Dead
Directed by Sam Raimi
Written by Sam Raimi
Starring Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker, Theresa Tilly and Richard DeManincor
The Evil Dead Review
People drive up to a remote cabin in the woods. It’s the opening scenario of many horror movies. Hell, it’s in the opening of every single one of the Evil Dead movies (so far)…including 1981’s The Evil Dead. A low budget showcase for the talents of director Sam Raimi and his soon to be horror icon leading man, Bruce Campbell.
There’s an interesting phenomenon that happens with classic movie series. Sometimes a casual viewer will think about an iconic moment or scene and attribute it to the original film…when they’re thinking about a sequel. This is common with a series like Friday the 13th where most of the things that have become everlasting in the series aren’t in the first one. This isn’t contained to horror. When people think about Mad Max there’s a better than average chance that they’re remembering things from The Road Warrior. It’s likely as true with The Evil Dead as it is with any franchise.
Evil Dead II took everything that The Evil Dead does (for the first act…literally) and does it better. It’s funnier, it’s wilder, it’s more fun…it has better acting and effects. Raimi, incredibly impressive in the original, was even more creatively ambitious in the sequel. Campbell had grown as an actor and was effortlessly charming in 1987 in a way that he was not yet in 1981. The legacy of The Evil Dead could have easily been that it was a test run for what would become a masterpiece. There is only one problem with that. It discounts what an incredibly great movie it is.
It would be fair to say that not everything about The Evil Dead works. Its pacing is all over the place, for starters. The acting leaves something to be desired as well. More than once characters not in the forefront of the action stand around looking like they’re waiting for an invitation to join the scene. Not every practical effect works…but most do…and boy do they ever. Some of this can be chalked up to budget, others to inexperience. There is a certain charm in some of the misfires, however. Most importantly…they don’t hinder what The Evil Dead does well.
This is a gritty, unrefined horror movie in the best of ways. Gore splatters and limbs are hacked apart. The Evil Dead not only doesn’t shy away from gratuitous gore effects…it revels in them. The story moves along at its awkward pace…but the next ridiculous practical effect draws your attention right back in. As mentioned, the practical effects don’t always work as well as they could…but most of them work far better than you could hope for at the time.
The story is simple. The group heads to a cabin and discovers the Necronomicon (Book of the dead). They foolishly play an audio recording of an even bigger idiot reading Latin aloud and they unleash hell upon them. That hell mostly comes in the form of Deadites…parasitic demons that take a human host…but pretty much everything is in play once the Latin is read. Clocks stop ticking, walls start bleeding, trees get frisky.
There is no shortage of jump scares and atmosphere in The Evil Dead. The payoff to every scenario is more blood and disfigurement…which heightens each subsequent sequence. Everything from a chainsaw to a shovel to a pencil is a potential weapon. The best thing about the chaos is how truly random it is. Violence comes from every direction at unexpected times. It adds up to a seemingly hopeless situation for Ash and company. Of course, they don’t do themselves any favors either.
The characters in The Evil Dead seem monumentally unequipped to handle the situation. The Ash Williams that you have in your head? The one full of quips and kickass? He’s not in this movie. This Ash spends most of the movie being completely incompetent. Thwarted by pieces of loose furniture. Frozen by fear and indecision. Easily duped and too afraid to engage.
In some ways The Evil Dead is the story about Ash Williams becoming capable. After a certain point he has no choice but to fight back and try to survive. He’s still not good at it…but at least he learns to try. By the final act he starts to resemble the Ash we all know and love a bit more. In fact, the entire third act starts to look a lot more like Evil Dead II. It starts to experiment with the weirdness more and more. It’s probably no surprise that this final act is the highlight of the movie.
Ash, alone and confronted by the Deadites that were his friends and loved ones, works incredibly well here. Given that the character was sitting on a couch watching his friend fight off a demon a short time earlier…that’s some good character growth. It goes along with The Evil Dead’s greatest strength. It gets more exciting as it goes along.
Perhaps it gets most exciting when it becomes a completely different movie a few years later…but what is accomplished in this low budget gorefest shouldn’t be ignored. You’re watching a director and actor become more confident and ambitious as the movie goes along. While they may not be fully formed…it leaves you with the promise that one day they will be. That day would come six years later.
But that doesn’t dull the effectiveness of the original visit to the cabin. The Evil Dead stands on its own as a sterling example of early 80s horror. Visceral and vital. Wild and wonderful. Ambitious and everlasting. It might be the scariest of the series, and in some ways the most effective. That it isn’t the best of the bunch isn’t a knock. The truth is it gets far closer than it has any right to.
Keep an eye out for our Evil Dead Week podcast…out Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts.
Scare Value
The Evil Dead‘s biggest problem is that Evil Dead II exists. Although a classic in its own right…if you find yourself wanting to pop in an Evil Dead movie…you’re probably going with the superior sequel. Don’t let the fact that Raimi delivered a masterpiece a few years later distract you from his near masterpiece that started it all. One of the best cabin in the woods movies ever made…as effective today as it was four decades ago.
4.5/5
The Evil Dead Links
Rent/Buy on VOD from Vudu
Rent/Buy on VOD from Amazon
Buy on Blu-Ray from Amazon
The Evil Dead Trailer
If you enjoyed this review of The Evil Dead, check out Shifted
