One of the great horror films

Rating: Null/10 (8 December 1999)

I think the first Evil Dead is my favorite of the trilogy, even though everyone I know says 2 is the best. Strangely enough, the first time I watched the trilogy, I watched the films in reverse order, having been introduced to the series by Army of Darkness, then watching Evil Dead 2, and then (after some searching, this was well before Anchor Bay's re-release) Evil Dead. I think the reason it's my favorite of the trilogy is that it's a horror comedy that puts equal emphasis on both. Evil Dead 2 would lean more toward the comedy aspect, and Army of Darkness essentially became an action comedy with monsters.
An incredible film when you consider it was made by a bunch of college students. Some very innovative camera-work, including the now-famous "Raimi-cam", as Joel Coen calls it. Has some rather low-tech but still effective special effects, some of them are a little creaky compared to the effects in the sequals though. Being a big fan of stop motion animation, I really enjoy the stop-motion special effects. I can see why a lot of Asian horror movies, like Hong Kong's Chinese Ghost Story series and the Japanese Evil Dead Trap (the sequals are in name only, and have less of a supernatural element) are influenced by this film. The acting is a little amateurish, but it gets the job done, and is appropriate to a film like this. We get a feeling that the Ash persona hasn't quite developed yet in this film, a lot of Evil Dead fans complain he comes off as kind of a wimp in this film, I think that's appropriate though, and important to the development of the character.
I think overall, this is a very different film from the two sequals (which I like very much, but prefer the first). In this film, the violence comes of as a bit more graphic, and not as slapsticky as in the sequals. It's hard to measure, but I think this is the goriest of the three. The sequals may be much more polished and technically accomplished, with excellent cinematography by Peter Deming in Evil Dead 2 and by Bill Pope in Army of Darkness, but The Evil Dead has a certain raw, original quality the sequals tried, but failed to recapture. I think the sequals are both very good films in their own right, but I think The Evil Dead is the best of the trilogy. One of the all time great horror films, along with Dario Argento's Suspiria, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Peter Jackson's Braindead (Dead Alive in the U.S.), and many other great films I don't have room to list.