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The Evil Dead
Horror / English / 1981
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
I've only seen the Evil Dead remake and Army of Darkness. My only knowledge of this movie is that it potentially kicked off the "Cabin in the Woods" subgenre of horror, it was supposed to be seriously, but after a sequel it completed it's transformation into a comedy. Oh, and somebody gets raped by a tree.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
If you had asked me whether I thought the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Evil Dead would be more gory, I would incorrectly suggest Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The remake is certainly gory, but I underestimated how much blood there would be in this movie. And I don't like it.
Perhaps there's something to be said of the practical effects versus the CG of the remake, but honestly the practical effects in general were kind of bad, and overall the production of this entire movie was noticeably amateur.
Everything from the ambiguous basement light sources to the obviously polygonal cut holes in the front door of the cabin by the end of it all looked super low effort/budget, continuity errors and all.
There were also some bizarrely obvious logical errors, like Ash getting attacked through a large window, so the first thing he thinks to do is... lock the front and back doors. There's even a shot where he moves a dresser across the same wide open window to block the front door, as if it's been established that the spirits of the cabin can only enter through doors or something.
Anyway the entire plot is spirits around a cabin possessing the cast of characters and the characters have to start killing each other. That's pretty much all you need to know. There's a book that passages need to be read from to summon the dead, yada yada yada, there's a recording, blah blah blah.
Part of why I'm being very brief while writing this is that I'm incredibly distracted and annoyed at a parrot I recently adopted. It screams at such an infuriatingly ear-splitting level and somehow pattern recognition has failed to register in it's little brain that screaming gets it's cage covered.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the acting is serviceable I guess? At least until anyone gets demonically possessed, then they start overacting like crazy. Also there's uber spooky voices in the darkness that start saying "Join us..." basically right away so it's no surprise Raimi would feel the need to quickly pivot to comedy.
There really isn't a whole lot to comment on about this movie since pretty much performed about as I expected, save for including a lot more blood and little more stop-motion skin dissolving animation.
Best thing I can say is it starts quickly and remains engaging, and it's not just the characters getting sequentially punked out before anybody else realizes what's going on.
I do feel like there's a version of this movie that could have been genuinely creepy and atmospheric, but this movie's about as atmospheric as a dozen fog machines.
Final Verdict: [Weak]
The Evil Dead
Horror / English / 1981
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
I've only seen the Evil Dead remake and Army of Darkness. My only knowledge of this movie is that it potentially kicked off the "Cabin in the Woods" subgenre of horror, it was supposed to be seriously, but after a sequel it completed it's transformation into a comedy. Oh, and somebody gets raped by a tree.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
If you had asked me whether I thought the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Evil Dead would be more gory, I would incorrectly suggest Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The remake is certainly gory, but I underestimated how much blood there would be in this movie. And I don't like it.
Perhaps there's something to be said of the practical effects versus the CG of the remake, but honestly the practical effects in general were kind of bad, and overall the production of this entire movie was noticeably amateur.
Everything from the ambiguous basement light sources to the obviously polygonal cut holes in the front door of the cabin by the end of it all looked super low effort/budget, continuity errors and all.
There were also some bizarrely obvious logical errors, like Ash getting attacked through a large window, so the first thing he thinks to do is... lock the front and back doors. There's even a shot where he moves a dresser across the same wide open window to block the front door, as if it's been established that the spirits of the cabin can only enter through doors or something.
Anyway the entire plot is spirits around a cabin possessing the cast of characters and the characters have to start killing each other. That's pretty much all you need to know. There's a book that passages need to be read from to summon the dead, yada yada yada, there's a recording, blah blah blah.
Part of why I'm being very brief while writing this is that I'm incredibly distracted and annoyed at a parrot I recently adopted. It screams at such an infuriatingly ear-splitting level and somehow pattern recognition has failed to register in it's little brain that screaming gets it's cage covered.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the acting is serviceable I guess? At least until anyone gets demonically possessed, then they start overacting like crazy. Also there's uber spooky voices in the darkness that start saying "Join us..." basically right away so it's no surprise Raimi would feel the need to quickly pivot to comedy.
There really isn't a whole lot to comment on about this movie since pretty much performed about as I expected, save for including a lot more blood and little more stop-motion skin dissolving animation.
Best thing I can say is it starts quickly and remains engaging, and it's not just the characters getting sequentially punked out before anybody else realizes what's going on.
I do feel like there's a version of this movie that could have been genuinely creepy and atmospheric, but this movie's about as atmospheric as a dozen fog machines.
Final Verdict: [Weak]