Nowhere near as good as it is made out to be

Rating: 4/10 (29 March 2000)

The Evil Dead is regarded as one of the great cult horror films made in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Made for approximately $300,000 as an expansion (of sorts) to a student film made by Raimi entitled "Within the Woods," this film relies (after the initial twenty minutes) entirely too much upon shock tactics and stage blood to propel events onward, although since this is sort of what Raimi and company intended to do, it's not really a fault of the film itself. In any event, the first twenty minutes or so are brilliantly shot, well-made, and hint at all sorts of subtle terrors awaiting the audience amidst the imminent buckets of blood. However, after the visceral evil begins, there is a sharp decline. A few scenes come across as remarkably tasteless, and I won't go into them here. However, one does not review solely based upon the negatives, and there are a few great moments within. As I have stated earlier, the beginning is brilliant. The camera work is spectacular (as it is throughout the film), and between that and the performances we are drawn into the events of the film. We are the college students, and we are there in this quietly sinister cabin in the woods. After the beginning, things turn a little too splatter with too little substance to sustain or warrant the blood-drenched "horrors." One shot from this film will stick with me for a long time, though: the camera looks down from the cabin's roof to see two characters talking between the shining headlights of an Oldsmobile. This is a powerful scene, at once shuddering with latent horror and revealing just how talented Raimi is at the surrealistic, subtle side of horror. Too bad he didn't reveal more of that here.