The Evil Dead Review

Rating: 10/10 (12 March 2016)

I'm just gonna go ahead and say this, I truly believe The Evil Dead is one of the greatest movies ever made. I admire this movie on so many levels it's insane. Quick back story on The Evil Dead: Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi grew up together and made several low budget Super-8 mm films. Sam Raimi then had the idea of directing a horror movie and had a budget of about $1500 and he made a short film called Within the Woods. The idea of that film was to attract producers and use the money gained from that to create a full-length film. He then even asked friends and family for money to create his project. With around $350 000, Raimi set out to make a remake of his short film. What we got was The Evil Dead. The thing that interests me about the film so much (other than the film itself) is the production. With limited budget, Raimi had to cast friends of his (including Campbell) for the film. The crew consisted almost entirely of Raimi and Campbell's friends and family. The team had absolutely no assistance from location scouts and they had to find a fitting location for the film. They found an actual abandoned cabin in the woods in Tennessee to shoot. During pre-production, the entire team had to stay in the isolated cabin that had no plumbing, no heating and was far away from any medical assistance. Due to the crew's inexperience, many of them got lost in the woods and several got injured. One of the actresses even had her eyelashes completely torn off while taking off her mask. Because of the low budget, contact lenses to create the "demon-eyes look" were very thick and had to be taken off every 15 minutes because they eyes could not breathe. They could not afford a camera dolly so they had to build several things to create the desired camera movement, including attaching the camera to lumber. On the last few days of shooting, the conditions were so terrible, they began to burn furniture in order to stay warm. The actors went weeks without showering and many caught a cold because of the poor conditions. Shooting took 3 months and shortly after that, looking at the footage Raimi realized there were holes that needed to be filled (no pun intended) but the actors had already left the set and were already busy with other projects. So family members of Raimi filled in for the actors for the re- shooting of some scenes. Several sounds were not recorded properly, so dead chickens were stabbed to replicate the sound of mutilated flesh and Campbell had to scream into a mic for several hours. After months of torture, the project was finished.
So, is the film any good? Absolutely. It's a staple of modern horror. It's a clichéd script by now but it's executed perfectly. The movie knows what it is and it never tries to be anything else than what it needs to be. It's gory, silly and unapologetic. It has just the right amount of gore, horror, and black humor to be great. Campbell's great in the film, although he doesn't really shine as much in this as in Evil Dead II. But the film isn't about the acting. As a matter of fact, the script is minimal and so is the acting, but the movie's purpose is to be campy horror schlock and it succeeds in every way possible. Every jump scare is earned through tension. The gore is so ludicrous, it's great. I love the creative angles they used with the camera, as well as the use of fog. This is a perfect example of an extremely low budget movie executed to perfection. The Evil Dead isn't really that scary (at least to me) but it's so much fun and so much effort went into making it, I love it for that. The Evil Dead is one of my favorite films of all time and to end this review I want to quote critic James Berardinelli from his review of the film: "The extreme nature of the gore isn't beside the point - it is the point. Raimi goes so far over the top in presenting these displays that they take on a campy, almost humorous appearance. It's impossible to take all this blood seriously. So, instead of being sickened, we're strangely amused - and this is all intentional."
10/10