Review: The Evil Dead
Since it’s controversial release in 1981, The Evil Dead has become synonymous with Zero-Budget horror movies and cult classics, what it lacks in polish it makes up for with enthusiasm. It’s a film I’ve seen a number of times but I’m far more familiar with it’s sequels which take the general concept of a cabin in the woods and go utterly fucking crazy with it. And yet watching it again now I’m finding a new appreciation for the streamlined madness that signalled the arrival of Sam Raimi.
The film follows five friends – Ash Williams, his girlfriend Linda, his sister Cheryl, their friend Scott and Scott’s girlfriend Shelly – as they go on a vacation to an isolated cabin somewhere near Tennessee. While there they find a hidden cellar with a tape recorder belonging to an unnamed archaeologist and a copy of The Book Of The Dead, having never seen a horror movie before, Scott plays the tape which reads off passages within The Book, and unwittingly releases a demonic evil that surrounds the cabin and traps the friends inside.
As they are all tormented and tortured by an unknown presence, one by one the friends fall victim, until only Ash is left to either save their souls, or die trying.
At a little over 80 minutes long, there was no way the film was ever going to do much with its story and yet it uses that to its advantage, where Dead By Dawn ramped up the slapstick and Army Of Darkness is a full-on Three Stooges movie this first movie is more full-on with its horror elements and the fact that you’re never given an explanation for what is attacking these people is all kinds of terrifying. It’s that fear of the unknown that gives the film it’s edge, we don’t know what this is, what it can do, where it came from, and so the film can focus purely on attacking its lead characters and keeping them and the audience on their toes whenever it needs to turn up the scare factor. It’s a level of efficiency that makes the film work so well by utilising what little it has in order to get the most out of everything.
The one place I’d say the film falters is in its characters, but again the short runtimes contributes to that so I won’t judge it too harshly, besides we’re seeing these characters get tormented, there’s no need for a big dramatic monologue about who they are as a person. And that’s not to say anyone gives a bad performance, in fact other than Scott, who is half-dead on the couch for most of the film and not really given a lot to work with, everyone else pulls in some solid horror roles, the women especially having to put up with heavy make-up and jumping between their psychotic, possessed bodies and their fake crying selves. Linda gets the most out of this with her possessed giggling being one of the creepiest elements of the whole film and her one-on-ones with Ash giving her plenty to stand out with.
But of course, this film’s star is Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams, while not the dickish antihero we all know and love him as now, Ash here is played a little more straight, a little more scared of the madness around him, and naturally so, it’s a fucked up situation he’s in. And yet he does try, he tries to carve up Linda’s body with a chainsaw as noted to in the recording but he can’t bring himself to, it’s an understandable flaw and one that humanises Ash. What also helps is that Campbell is clearly game for whatever Raimi throws at him and the entire last act consists of Ash getting beaten, bruised and covered in gallons of blood from the possessed entities attacking him, it’s a frightening display and Campbell’s terrified expressions make it work all the more.
As much as Campbell is the face of the franchise, the brains belong to Sam Raimi in his feature debut, the amount of ingenuity Raimi brings to this film is impressive in and of itself with the micro-budget resulting in several moments needing to be improvised or worked around. Most notably the infamous POV of the demonic entity running through the forest was simply a camera stuck to pieces of wood then Raimi and Campbell running through the trees. Honestly reading into the making of this film it’s surprising it was made at all, let along that it came out this well, between the freezing conditions, the isolated location and the lack of facilities the whole experience has been documented as an absolute nightmare.
But that nightmare translates onto the screen and once Raimi introduced the possession elements the film takes on a whole life of its own filled with several layers of insanity. Raimi is primarily the reason the film works as well as it does, the energy he exudes through the screen is nothing short of miraculous and he brings it all to the table, the melting faces, the exploding torsos, the tree scene which is still a point of controversy even today, all of it stands the test of time and Raimi’s use of practical FX and make-up to really dig into the gross-out factor is what makes the film still so entertaining even today. Because while this is still the scariest out of the trilogy there’s an element of pitch-black humour that Raimi exemplifies in the sequels but it’s still present here, brought out whenever Ash needs to be tormented some more by the demons.
To reiterate what I said at the start, what The Evil Dead lacks in polish due to it’s tiny budget and first-time film-makers it makes up for with enthusiasm. Everyone knows exactly what type of film this is and nobody has any trouble with that, the story can be summed up in a sentence but that allows them to avoid any unnecessary exposition, the characters are underwritten but everyone gives strong performances with Bruce Campbell’s traumatised Ash setting the stage for what’s the come and Raimi’s direction squeezed as much as he could out of every penny and out of all his actors in order to deliver an atmospheric, fast-paced and disgustingly brutal tale of demons in the woods and he delivered that in spades. There’s a reason this went on to be one of the biggest franchises in horror and it all started here.
8/10