Bruce Campbell: The Evil Dead (1981) Review

To conclude the month of Bruce Campbell, I am reviewing the best movies he was in, The Evil Dead Trilogy. The first film in the trilogy was a landmark horror film that created the subgenre of teenagers in a cabin in the middle of the woods (other films in the genre including Dod Sno and Cabin Fever). This is what I consider to be the perfect horror movie, as it includes character development, a strong plot, amazing camerawork, and a gritty and terrifying atmosphere. The movie looks great, as the inventive and long camera shots from a first person perspective set the mood of the film and terrify the viewer. These shots flow across the forest towards, and through, the house, showing an unknown force chasing our heroes. All the shots in this film look great, Sam Raimi sometimes strapping the camera to the roof to get the perfect shot.

The plot of the film is that a bunch of teenagers partying in an abandoned cabin accidentally awaken an ancient evil by reading the Necronomicon. This of course causes a creature to be unleashed in the forest and many of the group gets possessed and turned into zombies. The main character of the film is Ash, played by Bruce Campbell, and he goes through actual character development throughout the film series, which is very rarely seen in horror films. He begins in this film as a total pansy, but by the third film he is a bad-ass action hero. This progression is very well done because at the start of the first movie he is very unnoticeable, until the deadites are unleashed and he starts kicking ass with his boomstick. The woman in this film are incredibly annoying and get killed off quickly, the men being the heroes and continuously having to help the woman. These girls are incredibly useless and at the start of the film Ash is useless too, unwilling to kill one of his friends that has been possessed. This tricks the audience into believing that Ash's friend Scott will be the hero, and although he's the only person in the group to think rationally it is actually Ash that survives the ordeal.

The gore effects in this film are gruesome and beautiful, exploding heads and limbs being hacked off. The gore looks incredibly real, however since the characters are killing zombies the act of this murder is forgivable. The end of the film uses stop motion to show the zombies rotting away and it looks spectacular; the finale is a GUY'S FUCKING HEAD EXPLODING! The ending is so satisfying and concludes with a cliffhanger, which is perfectly continued in the sequel, which featured more gore and violence.

The greatest scene in the film is early on, when Ash's sister Cheryl first hears the evil from the Necronomicon runs out into the forest in terror. This of course ends poorly when she follows a voice calling her name only to be led deeper into the forest. The trees begin to come alive and wrap around her ankles, pinning her to the ground. Then comes the greatest, most ballsy, mind penetrating ever featured in a horror film: Cheryl is raped by a tree.

Rating: 10/10
Fanboy Rating: 11/10