The Evil Dead is a B-grade horror film that captures all of the corny and predictable story lines of most horror movies. A group of friends go to a cabin in the woods and are terrorized by evil spirits during their stay. Between the bad acting and the parts of the movie that made me physically cringe, I can confidently say that I am not a fan.
The Evil Dead is an R-rated horror movie from 1981. This horror flick was directed by Sam Raimi and has received a 95% critic score and 84% audience score on rotten tomatoes.
The storyline and plot were largely predictable and I found myself getting bored at times because of this. For example, Cheryl goes out into the woods when she hears suspicious noises at night. No surprise that bad things happen while she is outside and once she gets back she isn’t the same. Also no surprise that bad things start to happen to everyone else shortly after.
I also found it odd that so many bad things could be happening at this cabin, but in between scenes the characters went back to being largely unaffected. They simply went back to playing their games or making trivial conversation. Don’t you think if your friend came back from the woods looking ragged and scared that you’d have a little bit more to say about it? The dialogue just seemed cringe worthy and unnatural given the circumstances.
Shortly after her outdoor excursion, Cheryl becomes possessed. She stabs a person in the leg with a pencil and starts to go on a rampage. The group struggles to get her shoved into the basement so they can shut the door and keep her contained. They start kicking her as she fights back in an attempt to shut the door. All that I could notice in this scene is that they were obviously kicking a dummy instead of a real person. Needless to say, the special effects in this movie were almost non existent (except when they decided to add in claymation, but that just left me confused).
The level of gore that was shown when the person got stabbed with the pencil unfortunately wasn’t over. In fact, gore seemed to be what Raimi liked to incorporate in this movie the most.
A fight scene ensues once another person becomes possessed, which left me cringing and gawking at the gore more than instilling me with horror. By the end of the scene I had the urge to say, “What the fuck did I just watch?”
This kind of incredulity continued throughout the movie as the gore just kept getting piled on.
I also wasn’t a huge fan of the musical score with its classic, corny sound, but I can’t bash that too much considering the year the movie was made. The sound effects, however, were just ridiculous. During one point in the movie one of the people that became possessed starts laughing an annoying, witchy laugh. After a few minutes worth of this, one of the other characters proceeds to slap her in the face to try and get her to stop, which pretty much summarizes how I felt by this point in the movie.
All and all, if you take this movie for what it is you might enjoy it. It’s a low budget, gory, and predictable horror movie, but I could envision this movie being some people’s “guilty pleasure.”
The film has obviously had success, regardless of my opinion, seeing as it has a 70% or above rating across most critic sites.
Overall, I would give this movie 2 stars out of 5.
Did this movie have shock and awe? Yes. Was it the kind of shock and awe that makes me want to come back to it? Absolutely not.
So, Maggie, did you cringe? Just kidding. Flinch, wince, and mortified might also have worked.
I’m reminded of one of my all-time favorite lines: “I’m appalled. With two P’s.”
Maybe a bit too much detail on the cringe-worthy scenes, but I appreciate the attempt to be positive at the end. You could bring in the idea of schlock, and that this was Raimi’s first full-length film (at the age of 21?).
I like the lead. You do come back to it in the end, though the mention of shock and awe” confused me. Was that one of the blurbs used to promote the DVD?