Evil Dead, too!

Rating: 10/10 (5 May 2008)

I have no interest in involving myself in the pointless debate about whether Evil Dead II is a sequel or a remake. It really doesn't matter, there's an argument for both sides and so the endless debates will, of course, go nowhere. What is not up for debate is that the movie begins with a recap of what happened in the first film, and then there is another group that heads out to the woods to spend a weekend in the creepy cabin in the woods. They discover a recording of a man studying the Necronomicon, The Book of the Dead (also found in the cabin), which included incantations that bring forth all manner of bad things.
Soon the movie becomes strikingly similar to the original, resulting I suppose in the controversy about whether it's a remake or a sequel. Personally, it feels like a rethinking of the first movie, where certain ideas and effects are fleshed out in ways that the financial constraints of the original film wouldn't allow, as well as a beefing up of the significant comic relief. Indeed, for all it's blood and gore and self-mutilations and animated severed limbs, this is one of the funniest horror films I've ever seen.
One thing that is shown in part II is a visual presentation of the evil force in the woods, which is sadly a disappointing attempt to add more complex special effects into the movie, but the majority of the film will be remembered as Ash's truly classic battle with the evil force in the cabin, which ultimately starts to take over his own body, but he is able to stop it by cutting off his own possessed hand. Love it or hate it, this stuff has never been done in a horror movie before, and that's not the only genuinely original thing. Even furniture becomes possessed and laughs hysterically at Ash, and we laugh along with them. This is about as fun as gore films can get!
I think that one of the best things about the original film was its meager budget, but the best thing about the trilogy as a whole is that it is a horror film that is intended almost exclusively for horror fans. Bring a date to watch this movie and I'm willing to bet that you will find yourself lonely in a hurry. Evil Dead II is packed with horror thoughts and ideas that seem to have come out of nowhere, they are so over the top and unique. Ash is attacked by a severed head, a headless body, and his own severed hand in the movie, along with countless other beasties, and the effect, due in no small part to his hilarious reactions, is horror entertainment of the highest order.
Of course, the budget is bigger now, but Raimi was able to take more money and still retain the same feel of the original film, except that he was able to give us more detail and use more effects this time around, but definitely without selling out. Whether he did this later in his career is up for debate, but in the first sequel in the Evil Dead trilogy, it almost seems like he took more money from bankrollers who expected a more accessible horror film and then tricked them, giving us a movie that is still intended for the original fans.
Raimi soon moved away from the gritty horror genre with more accessible films, like The Quick and the Dead and the astonishingly brilliant A Simple Plan, before moving into mainstream Hollywood with the Spiderman movies, but it is the simplicity of the Evil Dead films that his fans will always remember with the most fondness. It is telling that the Spiderman juggernaut is known, among fans, and being directed by the guy who made the Evil Dead films, and not the other way around. Peter Jackson, on the other hand, will always be associated with the Lord of the Rings films, while his own early horror films are all but forgotten. For horror fans, there are not many truer films than the Evil Dead series