A clever blend of ironic cliché and straightforward, unsettling horror - well deserving its cult infamy

Rating: 8/10 (25 April 2009)

There remains a perpetually unmistakable veneer to the sect of films known as "cult hits" - classics to certain select groups of people without being necessarily enjoyed or even known by a mass audience. It would be difficult to find a more fitting example than maverick director Sam Raimi's feature-length debut, The Evil Dead, decades before the Spider-Man films. In fact, apart from a vaguely distinctive style and cheeky humour, the two bookends of Raimi's career to date could hardly be more different on the surface: Spider-Man a mainstream, big budget action blockbuster and The Evil Dead a shoestring budget, schlocky horror comedy, tailored only really to appeal to a select fan base sharing a gruesome sense of humour. But most prevailing between the two, at the risk of delving into sentiment, is the passion and heart Raimi instils into each, regardless of their exterior trappings or financial investment. Despite being an ultimately small and unassuming film, The Evil Dead goes about its business in a remarkably self-assured and efficient fashion, just as fundamentally constructed to entertain as a certain friendly neighbourhood superhero.
Given the general association of such horror fare with a sense of "so bad it's good", it is easy to forget just how grimly effective Raimi's film is, or how much of a cornerstone for 'do-it- yourself' film-making and macabre special effects. Masking its microscopic budget with chilling use of a single forest location (decades before The Blair Witch Project), Raimi's film opts instead for horror atmosphere turned bludgeoning object, complete with a pounding dirge of an ominous musical score and frantic cinematography, zooming along the forest floor as if precipitating the tension to unbearable levels. Similarly, for all of its deliberately campy excesses, it becomes increasingly undeniable just how genuine a knack Raimi's film demonstrates for full-blown fright, with an overwhelmingly Gothic ambiance and eerily effective mastery of horror conventions, extracting surprising scares from even the most familiar of set-ups. Indeed, rather than trying to fight the inevitable onset of cliché, Raimi instead cheerily incorporates them into his film and simply uses them for his own purposes, a welcome synergy of time worn technique into an ultimately unique concoction.
Similarly, Raimi shows an innate awareness of viewer expectations as well as genre conventions, and gleefully takes pleasure in inverting just about everything which doesn't contribute to the continuous sense of creeping horror turned symphonic chillfest. Many sequences which should be terrifying are instead turned morbidly funny, many seemingly innocent sequences are twisted into being frightening, the film's sole romantic part is rendered completely un-romantic, and the fleeting moments of typical horror gratuitous sexual objectification are completely de-eroticized. However, Raimi appears equally determined to work in just about anything possible geared towards making his viewers squirm, and the film delivers in spades on the gruesome violence and disturbing gross-out effects front - no matter how intentionally campy and relatively cheaply they are done, the sheer gut reaction generated by them is the mark of a true genre pro.
The film also marks the breakthrough performance of soon to be B-movie superstar Bruce Campbell, and his enormously enjoyable work in The Evil Dead demonstrates exactly why his popularity would subsequently rise so vastly. Campbell manages to encapsulate the tone of the movie within his performance alone: on the surface serious and slightly nerdy, but with a thinly veiled quirky and goofy sense of humour on the underbelly, managing to not only amplify the shudders and screams of the rest of the film but bring a very welcome comic charisma to it as well. The rest of the cast appear to be giving almost wilfully bland performances, making their subsequent encounters with the demonic exactly the sort of abrasive difference needed to infuse the picture with a true shock value. As such, while most of the actors may spend most of the picture doing nothing but screaming and howling, they do it with considerable energy and aplomb, as well as a slyly ironic sense of humour making their presence all the more appealing.
While likely too ironically cheesy, terrifying or wilfully gross to appeal to a mass demographic, The Evil Dead nonetheless merits its reputation as one of the defining early cinematic meldings of horror and comedy, as well as a foundational text for the school of schlocky, 'do-it-yourself' horror productions. Infamous in its cult success, the film marks a rare exception of living up to its hype, and should prove near essential viewing for any horror enthusiasts who have yet to experience it.
-8/10