Spooky, Funny and Unsettling - Evil Dead Remains Vastly Superior to its 'Sell-out' Sequel

Rating: 8/10 (1 November 2012)

Jump sequences have been quite successful in evoking fright; add to that a claustrophobic cabin and remove any sort of background music and what you get is tense gripping horror. This element was entirely missing in the sequel of Evil Dead, which I had the displeasure of watching about a year ago. Evil Dead however retains segments of horror while also providing enough laughs, and thus remains more exciting, more interesting and more original than its sequel.
The plot of Evil Dead is not very new: Ash, his sister Cheryl, his girlfriend Linda, his best pal Scott and Scott's girlfriend Shelly decide to stay the night at a lonely deserted cabin in the woods. In the first scene itself, as they are traveling in a cramped car to their destination, they encounter this mysterious force (although they do not understand what actually happens) as their car steering wheel loses control momentarily. As they cross the rickety bridge to the cabin, a plank of wood gives away under the car's weight but they somehow cross the bridge and drive to the cabin.
Over there, the mysterious thing's presence is felt again as a swing outside the main door keeps striking the house until Scott opens the door. At night, Cheryl is the first unfortunate to be directly targeted by the force as it takes control of her hand while she is drawing. Later, at dinner, the moment Scott says 'party down!' the basement door opens on its own. In a funny Scooby Doo like sequence, the camera pans at each one's faces as they speak their thoughts about the incident. Scott first enters the basement with Ash following and the pair come out with a book on the dead and a tape recorder. The tape, recorded in the past by a doctor, is played and the evil spirits are beckoned. After Cheryl is raped by the forest, she demands Ash to take her out of town but the pair realizes the group's fate is doomed when they see the bridge destroyed. One by one, Cheryl and the others are possessed and it is up to Ash to do something before it is too late.
The low level canting shots in Evil Dead, which were shot without using dollies (the crew couldn't afford it) made me uneasy and I was reminded of similar shots in Blair Witch Project; its marvelous how these raw effects could evoke fear while many of the sophisticated effects in recent movies cannot. Another interesting element is Raimi's focus on the eyes: when the pendulum stops suddenly, a close up shot of Cheryl's frightened eyes are seen. A much better example is when Ash keeps a box on his lap and feigns to sleep while Linda tries to look at the contents. The camera focuses on their eyes as they play this little game of theirs. Later, when Ash is about to bury a possessed Linda, she pretends to sleep and the camera again focuses on their eyes, thus depicting the irony and difference in the situation.
The gore in the film is plenteous, but it isn't very disturbing as most of the blood comes from the zombies. However, there is the tree rape scene that is much more uncomfortable since Cheryl isn't in a possessed state. This reminds me of another scene in the movie: just when Ash contemplates striking a possessed Linda, she turns normal for a few minutes and begs Ash to protect her from 'them'. This was when I realized how my perception regarding the gory content changed when the characters transformed; it would have been much more disturbing to see a normal Linda being hacked to death.
Bruce Campbell, the supporting cast and the 'fake shemps' deliver great performances for a horror movie. Some of the dialogs are very funny and very cheesy, with Linda getting some of the worst and most vapid lines in the film. The thing I did not understand about Evil Dead is how the entire 'monster mechanism' worked – while it seemed at times that the evil force could not enter the 'cabin' (Ash closes the doors and locks the force outside), Linda gets possessed all of a sudden even though Cheryl only stabs her with an object and doesn't bite her.
I saw Evil Dead twice and thoroughly enjoyed it both the times. While its sequel sells out for popcorn fun, Evil Dead remains spooky, funny, unsettling and the superior one.