By Sean McDonnell
"Groovy."
In the sort of sequel to The Evil Dead, Sam Raimi creates a more interesting cult horror than the
previous incarnation which is super violent, fun and most of all, silly!
Raimi originally intended for his previous effort The Evil Dead to also be a horror
comedy and as much as I find the hyperbolic gore and dialogue in the
first film to be kind of hilarious, it is nowhere near as good as this
beautiful masterpiece of horror! The film sort of picks up where the
first film left off (I will warn there’s lots of continuity errors in
this beautiful franchise) following the hero of the trilogy, Ash (the
man, the myth, the legend - Bruce Campbell) who discovers the "Necronomicon Ex-Mortis" (The Book of the Dead) and accidentally
releases an evil demonic force. Now Ash must use his courage to battle
against evil, with very funny results!
 |
| There's a time and a place for this face, when I think of one I'll let you know. |
The brilliance in this film is the pacing. The first film took a good -
but understandable - while in developing the discovery of the book. This
film however, only takes a few minutes. The iconic POV sped up shot of
the evil kicks in, removing a plot build up but still keeping the
suspense and excitement in what Ash will face. It’s just so simple,
removing a little bits of horror development for the love of cheesy
dialogue, alright acting (sorry Bruce, you’re an awesome dude because of
your acting don’t worry!) and of course...GORE! The violence is what
you’d expect if you’ve seen the first film, but it’s all the more funny
because of clumsy Ash as he faces flying limbs, blood fountains and even
his sanity! The special effects such as the stop motion are also top notch
and definitely beat all the over the top CGI you’d see from a current
spoon feeding “horror”. Raimi's use of makeup once again is also amazing,
the detail on the demons' faces for a modern audience looks old but it
really works a lot better than nowadays, such as CGI being used for
Freddy Krueger for the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
It’s understandable why this film is a cult classic, it’s Sam Raimi and
Bruce "Chin" Campbell at their finest hour (how were they involved in Spider-Man?). It’s a perfect film for any horror fan who wants a scare
and a righteous laugh out loud. Evil Dead II is a low budget B movie
classic that captures so much entertainment in 90 minutes that it
deserves to be the best out of all the trilogy with its comical acting,
amazing effects, camp script and all round sense of entertainment. It’s
quite simply...*intense Ash voice* groovy.
Sean also has his own blog, which you can find here.
No comments:
Post a Comment