The Evil Dead

Boy, has it been a rough logging week. I was a few hours into Fallout 3 before the game froze up on me, stopping all momentum in its tracks. I had resumed playing Final Fantasy Tactics A2 on my DS and was making good progress, but a sudden "game over" in a difficult battle undid hours of progress and really killed my desire to keep going for now. And on the TV front, I've decided it's time to revisit Carnivàle, a show I've been pretty disengaged from since the second or third episode of the first season;; needless to say, the going has been slow and pretty uninspired. There are good times and there are bad times when one is clearing out his backlog, and this has just been one of many inevitable nadirs in the roller coaster that this journey is. But when I learned earlier tonight that my workplace would be closed the next day, I figured it was the perfect excuse for a little late night movie-watching. I needed something quick enough to finish before I fell asleep, but good enough to lift my spirits out of my recent logging funk. What I needed was the acclaimed cult classic, and one of fellow blogger Trev's favorite movies of all time, The Evil Dead.

It delivered.

I hate to use hyperbole and say things along the lines of "this was a perfect horror movie," but quite frankly, this may have been a perfect horror movie. It was bloody and gore-ridden, but it was also masterfully creepy and suspenseful. This balance is hard enough to pull off, but what's more - and most important - is that The Evil Dead never stops being fun. I wouldn't call it campy or cheesy either; Sam Raimi knew just how far to take the violence and just how long to let ominous shots linger without letting anything breach the proverbial "top" that so many other movies strive to "go over." Even the film's biggest obvious weakness - its low budget and inexperienced actors - was used to an advantage. Instead of being distracting, things like bad makeup and jerky camera shots and billowing smokey mist all end up enhancing the atmosphere of the film. The premise couldn't be more simple. Five young adults rent a cabin in the woods and find something in the basement that releases ancient evil spirits. (This is literally the exact same starting point for Cabin in the Woods, a genre-changing movie from earlier this year, which is clearly a tribute more than a coincidence.) From there on out, demons possess the friends one-by-one over the course of one night until our last man standing finds a way to destroy the evil spirits once and for all in what is easily the most incredible use of "claymation as a means to animate horrific body decomposition" since Raiders of the Lost Ark. The movie's utter simplicity is another major component of its overall effectiveness as a milestone and a classic.

I've often expressed disappointment on this blog when it comes to older movies; for every 2001 or Dog Day Afternoon that I enjoy, there are a handful of letdowns in the vein of The Godfather, Alien, Lawrence of Arabia, and Caddyshack - movies that weren't necessarily terrible, but that had a great deal of trouble living up to their reputations. Chalk The Evil Dead up as one for that former group and consider me very interested in seeing its two sequels.