Not straightforward, but a hell of a time

Rating: 8/10 (9 December 2007)

I watched this right after the first Evil Dead, expecting it to start up where the last one left off. Not only was it tonally different, but it almost completely change Ash's character, and pretty much rewrote and compressed into the first few moments what had happened in the first movie. This threw me for a loop at first, but by the time Ash's hand was smacking him around the cabin I didn't care. Usually I would like there to be more continuity in both story and character, but Evil Dead 2 makes up for it by being just plain awesome. I did not like that they redid the tree rape from the first movie, because that was one of my all time favorite horror scenes. But I forgive Raimi these little things, because he made a fun, campy flick for schlock fans everywhere. Who else found themselves chanting "Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!" during the hand scene?