Horror classic

Rating: 10/10 (26 October 2015)

Sam Raimi's hyperactive, crazed The Evil Dead is a benchmark zombie flick, a milestone in the realm of practical effects, and just a bloody damn good time at the movies. And I do mean bloody, as gallons upon gallons of blood, puss, and all manner of other goo are spilt, and slabs of latex gore are flung around for nearly the entire hour and a half running time. Now iconic Bruce Campbell plays Ash, a hardware store clerk on a remote getaway with a few friends at a cabin in the woods. Upon entering the dilapidated base,sent, they find a seriously no touchy looking book, which of course they open anyway, reading some of the strange words within. The book is the Necronimicon, containing ancient incantations which bring the forces of evil to wild, screaming, laughing, projectile vomiting life. No sooner have they spoken the words, something makes its way from the woods to haunt them relentlessly. The POV shots of a fast moving 'something' tearing it's way across the underbrush towards the cabin are now iconic as well, and a telling sign of the delirious horrors to come. Corpses start to come back to life, and really mean that. These aren't shambling, sluggish undead, or rage virus fast ones either. They're the film's own brand of demented zombies, spastic lunatics that howl, cackle, speak in tongues, spew bile everywhere, cavort around like chickens with their heads cut off (which happens) and generally liven up the movie with their nonsensical antics. Oh yeah, and there's a scene where a girl gets rated by a gropy tree (!). It's all filmed in a hazy, jagged manner, unpolished and sketchy as hell, making us feel like this really is happening in so,e weird corn of the woods to these hapless people. Ash doesn't get his classic chainsaw hand or shotgun in this one, you'll have to wait for the sequel for that, which is just as awesome and amazing as this, but slightly more expensive looking. This is the ultimate cabin in the woods movie, a nerve shattering exercise in go for broke, kamikaze horror that doesn't let you catch your breath for a single second, either from screaming, laughing, or screaming with laughter.