Night of the Living Dead meets the 3 Stooges

Rating: Null/10 (10 November 2002)

And somehow Raimi and Campbell make it work. Yeah, the plot is stupid, yeah there's excessive gore for the sole purpose of achieving an R rating, and yes, Ash is the biggest idiot alive. If you have a problem with that, proceed to "the Exorcist" or "the Omen" in the video store. If your tongue can find your cheek, Evil Dead II is one of the biggest blasts this side of the world of dark humor by two of the sickest guys in Hollywood (gotta love Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell for it.)
What's ironic is I find myself loving Evil Dead II for the very same reasons why I absolutely hate films like Friday the 13th, the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, and even TCM (don't even get me started on the new wave of horror.) And Evil Dead succeeds in finding a way to make a comedy film in a horror setting; this specific blend of genres is very very rare (Dead Alive being the only other I can think of outside of the Evil Dead family.)
Compliments to Sam Raimi for blending this slap-stick humor effectively into this deadite plagued cliché horror world, and also for endlessly and mercilessly punishing Bruce Campbell from credits to credits. Compliments to Campbell and Ted Raimi for taking Sam's crap!
The characters in this film, while generally idiotic, somehow wins the audiences affection . . . very strange for me considering typically I'd rather see stupid characters get hacked up. The difference is Bruce Campbell's character entertains. Yeah, he does stupid things . . . but he's funny as hell doing it. That and the god-awful cheesy one liners don't hurt either (Army of Darkness--Hale to the King Baby!).
The other characters are more or less throw aways, they're cliché, and they're ridiculous. They're played to a far extreme too, but with the whole atmosphere of this film . . . it fits. They're fun to watch. It entertains because *the characters fit the film.* I hate Friday the 13th, and Friday the 13ths characters are no more/less intelligent than these guys, but Evil Dead's characters don't annoy me . . . because Evil Dead doesn't try to be a scary slasher. Evil Dead has a horror setting, but it's a comedy at heart.
Evil Dead knows what kind of film it is, and it embraces it completely. Friday the 13th has the wrong kind of characters to be a 'scary slasher', and it has the wrong style and atmosphere to be a comedy. Evil Dead II nails it, and somehow through all its idiotic (however extremely fun) situations and characters, somehow it remains more sophisticated than most "serious" horror films hope to be.