Overall Rating
  Awesome: 80.58%
Worth A Look: 10.07%
Average: 2.16%
Pretty Bad: 1.44%
Total Crap: 5.76%
5 reviews, 109 user ratings
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| Evil Dead 2 |
by Brian McKay
"This film's budget was 3 million? They must have spent 2.8 of it on beer"
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"Who's the white square-jawed hick, with a chainsaw hand and a big Boomstick? ASH! (you're daaaamn right!) Sam Raimi shows how you can make a good movie with 3 sets (if you count the woods as a "set"), and Bruce Campbell once again proves he's one of the GROOVY-est motherfuckers on the planet.I'm not kidding about the three sets thing. 98 percent of the film takes place in the woods, at the bridge, or in the cabin. The cabin itself, a seemingly tiny backwoods edifice, seems to go on for room upon room as the camera slams through door after door looking for our hapless hero. Evil Dead 2, is a prime example of how a good film can be made with a mere handfull of sets, characters, and dollars (although the 3 million dollar budget reported at IMDB for this film seems a bit high).
The movie, a sequel/remake/whatever to the original Evil Dead, lightens up a little and introduces an entirely new element missing from the original - comedy. The first Evil Dead, with an even smaller budget, took itself all too seriously, touting itself as "The ultimate experience in grueling horror". Well, it wasn't quite all that, but it was a fairly entertaining piece of B-movie schlock, the only humor provided by the laughable monster effects at the end.
Evil Dead 2 still manages to convey that original sense of horror, from the claustrophobic confines of the cabin, to the "monster cam" view that winds it's way through the misty woods and smashes down doors. However, there are some scenes that are so completely off the wall hysterical (Like Ash fighting with his own demon-posessed hand in a scene reminiscent of "The Three Stooges") that the film blurs the lines and threatens to become an outright comedy. It's remarkable how Raimi keeps the balance between the horror and laughter just right, allowing the audience to laugh and enjoy the ride, without becoming so silly as to not be taken seriously at all.
Bruce Campbell is what makes this film really work, however. Without the square-jawed, slightly thick-headed, and totally bad-assed Ash swinging a chainsaw-hand around and spouting such cool lines as "Swallow this" or "Let's go carve us a witch", this film could easily be as forgettable as any other cheesy B-horror film. Campbell's acting, combined with Raimi's direction, are what seperate this film from the pack.Although I enjoyed all three films in the series, this is certainly the best. If Evil Dead 1 took itself too seriously as a genuine horror film, then Army of Darkness made the mistake of swinging too far the other way into the realm of pure comedy, almost self-parody (though Ash had some more great one liners). Evil Dead 2 strikes just the right balance, making it an enduring cult classic.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1089&reviewer=258
originally posted: 07/22/01 06:42:36
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USA
02-Feb-1987 (R)
DVD: 27-Sep-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
02-Jun-1988 (R)
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