b-movie classic

Rating: Null/10 (6 September 2004)

For geeks everywhere, this is perhaps the ultimate embodiment of the b-movie, and Bruce Campbell is without question the god of the "genre." Though I must admit that this is one of my favorite movies, it certainly suffers from an identity crisis. It seems that midway through the movie Sam Raimi and company decided that they didn't want to be scary like the gorefest Evil Dead and decided to simply play upon the inherent ridiculous nature of horror movies. Whether Raimi was attempting to inoculate himself against criticism by sending up his own movie or just genuinely decided that taking a turn for the ridiculous was more interesting, we will never know. What we do know is that Evil Dead II is one of the most frenetic, gory and entertaining flicks ever put to celluloid. Raimi is indeed one of the most influential directors of the last 20 years for his hyperactive 3-D camera work. This movie shows more than the original his innovative directing style which would eventually fully mature in the action scenes in Spiderman.
Even though the movie is uniquely Raimi, Campbell, who took second billing to the zombies in the first one, truly drives this movie with his awful, hammy, yet brilliant acting. Truthfully, nobody else could have delivered the "who's laughing now!?" line, though that is not entirely a compliment. This is one of those movies you will either love it depending upon whether you have a love of the absurd or are genuinely expecting cinema. This is not a great movie, it's not even a good movie, but it is enormously entertaining and funny movie for those who enjoy schlock entertainment.