"Evil" Indeed!

Rating: 10/10 (15 September 2003)

As a birthday present to myself (and to gear up for the upcoming Halloween movie season), yesterday I bought the "Book of the Dead" edition of Sam Raimi's 1982 horror classic, "The Evil Dead." I had rented it the night before and much to my mother's dismay, I instantly fell in love with it.
"The Evil Dead" concerns five friends, including Ash (cult favorite Bruce Campbell), as they go on a vacation to the mountains. They spend the night in one of those spooky log cabins and as you know, trouble's a brewing. One of them, discovers the infamous "Book of the Dead" and as the plot requires, they read from it, not knowing that doing so would be opening up a Pandora's Box of ghastly horrors. One by one the friends are possessed by the malevolent forces that had been lying dormant in the woods, leaving only Ash to fight them off.
"The Evil Dead" is truly a classic in every sense. It's not scary at all, but does have quite a lot of tension. I would guess that if this is scary to any degree, it's not because of atmosphere really, but more because of the horrific makeup used and the incredibly gory special effects. All of this is lightened up by a really dark sense of humor that would become more apparent in the later sequels.
Sam Raimi really knows how to direct a good horror movie and of course would try to shake off this image over the next 20 years, which would lead him to directing last year's "Spider-Man." The hand-held camera shots, up close angles of Bruce Campbell in later scenes, is all genius movie-making.
"The Evil Dead" is a great horror film, don't miss it.
10/10