Fair...Not My Cup of Tea

Rating: 4/10 (28 June 2001)

I cannot add anything new to the critique of this film. I can praise the inventive camera work by Sam Raimi. It is outstanding. I can commend the production for its ability to use what little financial resources were available to their fullest. The film is effective in that it does create some good, honest scares. It utilizes some interesting special effects hitherto not seen in film. Bruce Campbell is very good in his role, and the other actors are not too terrible till make-up gets hold of them. Some of the night sequences are very chilling and atmospheric as well. But(and you probably knew this was coming)the film is wildly overrated as some kind of cinematic masterpiece. It is NO masterpiece. It is your basic take some teenagers out into the woods, let them play with black magic, and finally kill them off in crude ways. This is one gory, unrealistic film. That's fine if that is what you like. But I found myself yawning in some stretches through the repeated, pointless, senseless, brutal gore. And let's talk logic...at one point one demon-faced girl is knocking wildly on the door to get to Mr. Campbell...while only several feet down is a window that had its glass smashed in. She got something against windows? Evil Dead is not a bad picture. For its type, it is very good, but when you get right down to it...it's not my cup of tea to see so much violence with almost no exposition. I need a story with a little meat, not a lot of butchered meat and little story.