Mocking Halloween: Evil Dead

What isn’t there to like about Sam Raimi’s monster cult hit Evil Dead? It’s a perfect blend of horror, camp and comedy all rolled into one ‘cabin in the woods’ movie. The story follows a group of friends to travel to a cabin… in the woods… so that they can have a great time drinking and partying. Little do they know that there are demons lurking in the woods after the person who lived there before unwillingly summoned them from Hell. One might be asking, what can I possibly complain about Evil Dead. Well, I’ll tell you exactly that.

From what I know about the movie, this was supposed to be an actual horror movie and nowhere near a horror comedy or maybe it would have less comedy but more horror. It wasn’t until the sequel when Raimi decided to have fun with the genre. However, in the case of Evil Dead there are so many things that happen that just turn out to be hysterical than scary! Take for example, when Linda gets possessed she becomes insane and she laughs, giggles and pretty much stays in the same spot for a majority of some of the scenes. Perhaps it was intentional for it to be sort of silly but for a movie that has a huge reputation, it certainly didn’t live up to it. I don’t want to see demons laughing and giggling… I want to see them kill.

Even the infamous tree rape scene comes off as being really tacky and sort of out of place in the overall movie. When it happened all I could do was lean back and ask, “why a tree? Why couldn’t it have been something else?” Again, going back to the reputation this movie has… I want demons, not killer trees! I understand that there are demons in the movie, but still... raping trees? Perhaps this is one case where it isn’t the movie’s fault for being so ham-handed but rather the rabid cult fans of the film that make the movie seem as though it’s the greatest horror movie ever made… ever.