Enough Gore to Make Charles Manson Gag

Rating: 10/10 (5 February 2007)

As I sat down to watch The Evil Dead for the first time I was expecting to see an older version of Army of Darkness (since I had originally seen Army first).
As I watched I became more and more transfixed on how this movie (unlike Army's adventure, Sinbad, cheesy goodness) was truly disturbing and shocking. The movie held my ADD attention span for the entire length, with me begging for more by the end.
I was pleasantly surprised as I watched a possessed character stab a pencil into another's ankle and TWIST (which makes me quiver every time I see it), another character dragged mercilessly through the woods by possessed vines to ultimately be raped by a TREE (you heard right), and another possessed character pounding and screaming while trapped underneath a cellar door, antagonizing the poor Joe Schmo character of Ash.
This film, needless to say, is not a happy tale and not for the family (other than the Manson family, of course). It's so shocking that I find it refreshing to watch every time I do so that I can get a break from the high budget ridiculous world of A movies.
Sam Raimi makes an outstanding directorial (feature length) debut with this very original movie. Shots and angles are set up beautifully, most of which are skewed on purpose for the reason of showing the characters in a world that is unreal, which, I thought, was proper training for his future Spider-Man movies.
The average movie goer though may not appreciate this film. Do you see films once every 6 months or so? Films like "The Notebook", "Little Miss Sunshine" or "Lady in the Water?" Movies that you take your mom or girlfriend to? Yes? Then this movie isn't for you. The only people who can really appreciate this movie for what it is are the kind of people who have seen, and love movies such as "Bubba Hotep" and "Man With The Screaming Brain". The B movie fans.
This film is loved for all reasons. Most of all because of Bruce Campbell who portrays (beautifully) the Wimp to Leader of Men roll in this movie and it's sequels, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness.
What I like about this film is that it stands alone from it's sequels in that it was low budget and straight horror - no slapstick here, folks. Just pure gore, gore, gore. Story? Ha! Not here, sir. Too much grueling horror to take in all at once for there to be an Oscar worthy story here (Oscars are for snobby A list Hollywood types anyway). Again - that's what I love about this movie - it's simplicity, which, I think, was caused by the more than modest budget.
This film, along as entertaining, is also educational in the sense of film-making. This film is easily one of the most influential for filmmakers who just want to make a good movie. Someone could easily be influenced to make a movie if they were to watch three movies - Robert Rodriguez' "El Mariachi", Kevin Smith's "Clerks." and this movie, "Evil Dead".
In a world that's over saturated with $50-$250 Million epics, it's good to see a GREAT movie made for *only* $350,000. The lower the budget, the greater the movie, in my opinion as there's no option for money to save the day should a problem on set arise. As a filmmaker I know that no money means more creativity - you have to THINK your way out of problems, rather than buy those problems away (as most movie production crews seem to do) and, believe me - this movie is creative - you'll never look at milk, creamed corn and applesauce the same way again.
With talks of an Evil Dead 4 (possibly a remake) I cannot wait to see what Raimi, Tapert and Campbell have in store for us.