What a horrible horrible movie

Rating: 2/10 (1 July 2001)

**SPOILERS**I enjoy Sam Raim's work on Xena, and am also a small fan fo Bruce Campbell, so I thought I would rent this film to see why everyone liked it so much. I don't care for horror movies that much, but had heard this was a "cult classic." What a mistake. This was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I wanted to turn it off after 10 mins but figured I'd sit through it and eventually I'd "get it" and start to enjoy it. I didn't see any comedy in this film. If there was any, it was well hidden. There were a couple of funny scenes and some lame one-liners by Ash that came off as humorous, but nothing that made me crack a smile.
The sound work in this film is quite possibly the worst I've ever heard. I watdched it on video and you couldn't make out what people were saying half the times when other things were going on. One of the Deadites in the film is quote obviously using stock sound work of a bunch of chimpanzees. Maybe Raimi does this as a joke, but it seems more like he wanted it to be scary, since it is covered fairly well.
The majority of the film didn't make sense (what is up with his wife's locket, what is that thing that keeps coming at the cabin, why does his hand get posessed, what did he kill when he shot a hole in the wall and blood poured out, how do you kill the deadites, what makes someone a deadite, etc etc etc). SPOILER: At one point, Ash turns into a deadite, and then a few minutes later he turns back. WTF?! What makes him turn into one, that he got bit? Is that how it works? And why does he turn back to normal? Why does Jake turn into a Deadite when no one even touched him? If the deadites want these people dead, why don't they turn all of them into deadites? This movie made NO SENSE. It was FILLED with plot holes, and for the first time in my 25 years of watching films, I saw one that had NO CLIMAX. There was nothing at the end of the film to cheer for or even be upset about. It's like they ran out of film and just said "okay, we'll pick up where we left off with the sequel." It's amazing that Raimi can make such good work now, and back then it appears like he made EDII without ever having seen a film before.
I wanted desperately to like this movie, but the horrible visual and audio quality of it, combined with even worse acting (not Campbell's best) and no story made it impossible. I didn't find anything humorous about it, and must have missed every single joke that everyone else seemed to get. Watch at your own risk.
However, I will be renting Army of Darkness to see if Raimi can improve upon the story any with a higher budget and more experienced actors (I still have faith in Campbell).