Night of the Living Dead meets the Excorcist...and this is better than both.

Rating: 9/10 (2 June 2008)

This is a very silly movie...not as silly as the two sequels it spawned, but it's still silly. The violence is very over the top, and the villains of the film are creatures inhabiting the bodies of the characters, brought to life through black magic. The girl in the Excorcist said some pretty crazy stuff when she was possessed, and the characters here are just as rude and over the top. It's actually sometimes hilarious. At the same time, this is one of the most nerve wracking scariest horror flicks. You have no idea what's going to happen at any moment, and you feel for the protagonist Ash (Bruce Campbell) who's going through Hell trying to get out of this abandoned cabin.
Five kids go into the woods to an abandoned cabin, and after playing back a tape recorder, and evil force is unleashed. They try to survive as these strange spirits try to kill them off and possess their bodies. In order to kill the possessed people, known as deadites, their heads must be dismembered, leading to a lot of gore, and some violent and scary scenes.
Evil Dead, more than any other movie I've seen, has such a perfect mixture of slapstick and horror. These creatures are so vile and nasty, but at the same time somewhat humorous in their over the top nature, and the extreme gore effects. Someone could be chopping another person's head off, which would normally try to be scary, but here it's so over the top and the camera work is so fast it becomes comical. It's a really great mixture of humor and horror.
Overall, this is a great movie, which spawned off two sequels that were actually superior to it.
My rating: *** 1/2 out of ****. 90 mins. R for language and violence.