Review #181: The Evil Dead (1981)

This review was originally written in 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #36: The Evil Dead (1981)

As much as I'm trying to make these reviews as standalone as possible, I feel the need to tie this one (at least a little bit) into the last one (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) and the next one (Evil Dead II). So, bear with me I guess.

I'm a huge fan of the Evil Dead series as a whole. Evil Dead II was one of the first horror films I ever saw, and for many years was my favorite movie of all time. However, I was never a very big fan of the first movie; I only saw The Evil Dead a couple times and when I did, it felt "lesser" than Evil Dead II in every way. I'll save most of my comments about EDII until the next review, but I just want to say that in this particular rewatch, I came out liking The Evil Dead WAY more than I used to, and liking Evil Dead II a little bit less (though I still love it).

If you aren't familiar with the series at all, The Evil Dead is about a group of college students on a road trip (a familiar theme?) out to stay at a cabin in the woods. When they get there, they find an old book in the cellar, and a recording of the book's passages that turns out to awaken an ancient evil that possesses and kills most or all of them. The Evil Dead is the big-screen debut of director Sam Raimi, as well as actor Bruce Campbell, both of which have gone on to make much bigger, better things (some of which I've even reviewed this year!). Their first outing, though, has some high points, and some low points.

The low points first: this is a low-budget movie, and it was clearly their first full-length film. (Raimi had made some short films if I recall, including a short called Within the Woods that was eventually expanded on and essentially evolved into The Evil Dead.) When I reviewed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, one of my complaints was that it looked and sounded very amateurish. The same could be said about The Evil Dead, but there's a WORLD of difference between the two. Texas Chainsaw was an amateurish film where the whole idea was "Hey, what if this scene was gross?" and very little existed beyond that. And while The Evil Dead is certainly amateurish in some ways, at least it's trying to do something cool, and try as I might, I can't boil it down into a statement as simple as "Hey, what if this scene was gross?" The characters all have real development, the dialogue feels natural and the events move intuitively from one scene to the next, and I think all of its failings just come from inexperience and youth, not from any particular lack of taste or creativity. All of the actors look like they just started acting, the special effects look like they were just learning how a lot of this stuff works, and some parts of the script probably could have used another draft. But the end result is still a surprisingly good experience, with a LOT of heart, amazing camerawork, some incredibly clever effects, and some great characters!

Another complaint about Texas Chainsaw was that nothing happened for half the film. Arguably, the same could be said about The Evil Dead, but in reverse. The first half is standard horror fare (complete with incredibly cliche and stereotypical scares), and then everyone except Bruce Campbell's character Ash are killed or possessed. Then, the second half is almost entirely Bruce Campbell's descent into madness, watching him wordlessly react to the horrors going on around him. While the same amount of "nothing" happens as the first half of Texas Chainsaw, the end result is completely different, because the director actually understood what makes a compelling character and a compelling scene, even with very little "meat" on the proverbial bone.

Some of the effects in this movie made my jaw drop, some made me laugh out loud, and I was SO surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie after previous viewings left me uninterested. While I'll always advocate for the second movie over this one (the second one retcons this one out almost entirely so it's not required to understand the plot), this one is a solid horror experience, and I think it's worth watching anyway!

Overall Rating: 9/10 Liquid Mirrors

Fun Marketing Tidbit: The Evil Dead held a red-carpet premiere at the Redford Theater, just a few blocks away from my childhood home! To generate buzz, Sam Raimi hired ambulances to sit outside the building in case anyone fainted from how scary the movie was. I doubt anybody needed them, obviously, but what an impression that would make on passersby!