Evil Dead

Well, I start of my October with a first: a horror movie that actually managed to scare me! Yes, it’s Evil Dead, a low budget independent film directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell, in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and eventually turned goofy by its sequels. While the later ones might be funny, this one was pure scares.

The plot is five friends go camp out in a cabin in the woods. I only bothered to learn one name, Ash, so the rest we’ll just call the dead meats. They find a strange book in the basement, they play a recording with some weird incantations, and then stuff happens.

I'm glad I didn't know much more about this movie than Ash got a chainsaw hand in the second movie and the infamous tree scene, because I found myself being generally in suspense. The first scene where the woman was possessed by a deadite caught me off guard, and I was generally freaked out. However, the first sign the book was working was the infamous tree rape scene, and I was relieved that Sam Raimi regretted it, because I could have gone my whole life without seeing it. It wasn't scary, just unpleasant.

Everything else was scary though. The possessions... I havent seen The Exorcist as of this reading, but I think I'll pass if it's scarier than this. The creepy laughing, the make up, the voices... yikes. I'm not going to spoil any more of this, since that would ruin the scares, but it works.

A lot of it is atmosphere and camera angles, which makes it works on the small budget. It really speaks volumes for the talent. A lot of it is fear of the unknown. You don't really see a lot of the deadites in this movie. There's a lot we see from POV, but not the monsters themselves.

Oh, and the stop motion effects at the end are a treat. You never see that technique anymore unless it's an entirely animated movie. Always a plus.

The only nitpick? Is there any explanation why Ash wasn't possessed? Maybe in the sequel.

Rating: 9/10