It’s true that director Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead looks a little rote and dated to modern eyes, but that’s not necessarily the fault of the film. Mostly it’s due to the decades of imitators that have come after. If you’re trying to watch this low budget, blood and guts slasher for the first time today, it’s important to keep in mind how fresh and progressive Raimi’s kinetic camera work and near-montage style editing felt at the time, and that the group of kids going out to a cabin in the woods story had yet to become so much of an overdone trope. These days we complain about filmmakers moving their cameras too much or editing too quickly, or that every horror movie we watch seems to have the same premise, but a huge reason that’s the case is that a whole generation of filmmakers who grew up in the 80s entered into the industry wanting to be Sam Raimi.
The story here is really simple. A group of kids, three girls and two guys, are going out to a remote cabin, because in horror movies that’s the sort of thing young people do for fun, but once they explore the place they discover a flesh-bound book that they use to unleash demonic forces, and soon their night turns into one full of possessions and blood-lettings. Honestly, there isn’t more story than that. The rest of the film is just an excuse to show off gore and to experiment with what visuals could be accomplished on a shoestring budget. Back in the early 80s, thanks to films like Halloween and Friday the 13th, slasher movies were in full effect, but Evil Dead had to be the first (or was at least among the first) to really push the blood and guts to a place where it was being presented purposefully over the top, for reasons of self-aware ridiculousness. The results are largely that fun is had.
The Evil Dead isn’t exactly the untouchable classic that fans who had their socks knocked off by it in the 80s would lead you to believe though. While the gore is lots of fun, and it is amazing to see how much they were able to pull off with limited resources, there are several sequences that look so dated they just don’t hold up. Translation: the Karo syrup blood and silicone flesh still look great, the stop-motion disintegrations of bodies not so much. Plus, the acting is amateur enough to venture into the territory of cheese. Sure, there’s a manic charisma to the film’s star, Bruce Campbell, a charisma that Raimi showcased to great success in Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, but here the people surrounding him are so bad and the focus put on his over the top reaction shots is so slight that the acting can’t be seen as anything but a detriment. Still, The Evil Dead remains an entertaining watch and an important part of horror movie history.
