overpraised silliness

Rating: Null/10 (14 November 2000)

For years I had heard this thing hyped to the hilt and finally the other night I rented it to find out if I would love it as much as everyone else. I know its inappropriate to compare a sequel to an original work before the sequel came out, but I had been a relatively big fan of "Evil Dead 2" for many years so I looked forward to this. Unfortunately, this thing takes forever to get to the much heralded gore, and when it does, it's just plain ridiculous. There's the usual blood, but director Raimi also shoots white, green and an assortment of other colored goo at us which eventually ends up looking dumb. Especially in the last five minutes, where it is literally non-stop disembowling on a couple of the bodies that seemed to squirt anything Raimi could think of. Stuff I would venture to say doesn't even exist in the human body. One character even appeared to be shooting cottage cheese at one point as his (or her, the body was so badly deformed I couldn't tell anymore) innards were displayed endlessly. And for the first time in a film, and I would guess the last, a woman is even forced to have sex with a wooden stick! This is all happening because of wacko spirits who have been released from an ancient book in a remote mountain cabin where some college students have gone to unwind. Instead, these spirits, which REALLY delight in possessing and then opening up their victims ad naseum, show up to ruin their fun. The cast is ok, there are some good spooky shots, but the over the top and ultimately silly gore moments make this solely for serious bloodhounds.