Angst and Estrangement

Rating: 9/10 (19 April 1999)

Forget about the scenes of grueling violence, the dismemberment of heavily bleeding zombies, the ultra-rapid decay of undead bodies at dawn - these are just the usual horror-flick gimmicks. What makes this movie a stunningly accomplished oeuvre is the powerful representation of existential angst - the estrangement of the individual from its environment, the epiphany of becoming aware of the fundamental gap between nature and the individual man, shown in incredibly powerful images in the last half an hour of the movie, when Ash feels that the house (being a symbol of his "soul") is surrounded by an unseen, totally incomprehensible, yet omnipotent "evil" (the "absurd") : Everything has changed, nothing is as it was before, there is nothing familiar anymore, nothing to hold on to - this is the exposition of the feeling of the absurd in Camus' sense. Being restricted to a very small setting and cast of actors which gives the movie nearly the feeling of a play, the whole conception of the archaically simple plot is directed towards this last moment of total estrangement. I am very well aware that probably, Raimi just wanted to shoot an entertaining horror flick, but what he (probably unintentionally) accomplished is one of the most powerful displays of angst and estrangement in film history.