The Evil Dead (1981) Review
Next month the fifth movie in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rise hits theaters. I’d never seen any of the Evil Dead movies before, but I’m watching all of them before that movie hits theaters. We are week number 1 so we are talking about The Evil Dead (1981). Let’s get started!
The Good:
What works best about this movie is the direction from Sam Raimi. To most people Sam Raimi is the guy that directed a Spider-Man trilogy about 20 years ago. And more recently directing last year’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But Sam Raimi had a long history prior to Spider-Man (2002) or directing horror movies. And this was debut film. He was only 22 years old when this movie came out. They filmed it in 1979, so he was only about 20 years old when he did this movie. But even as a young filmmaker he was able to make an effective horror movie where his direction really popped and showed through-out this movie. Where he’s able to create these horrifying looking creatures and build tension through-out the movie. And just the way he shot the movie was just really interesting. It’s hard to fully describe what Raimi's direction worked, but it did work as a whole. Through-out the movie whether it was people sitting around talking or this evil dead creature was chasing Ash, you could feel Raimi’s direction all over this movie.
Another thing here is that it’s a bloody bloody horror movie. I was kind of surprised just how bloody this movie was. I haven’t seen a whole lot of Horror movies, but I’ve seen enough to know that they normally aren’t this bloody. Most of them are bloody, but this might be the bloodiest movie that I’ve ever seen. And when I’m writing this, I haven’t seen the sequels so I don’t know how much of this translates over to that movie. And I guess in this section I’ll also talk about the horror elements, and I thought the horror elements also really worked. There are several images in this movie that just stick with you, these images stick in your head as these very creepy and unsettling images to display on screen.
Somewhat tied to that, but the movie builds suspense, tension, and thrills all through-out the movie. Once the characters get the book of the dead to the credits it creates this unsettling atmosphere. This situation that keeps on rattling up the tension to make things crazier and scarier as you go through-out the movie. And just as the character starts to get picked off one by one the tension builds more and more. And once again, I think that boils down to Sam Raimi’s direction. Sam Raimi knows how to build tension in these movies and this is an example of that.
And with the Evil Dead franchise you have to talk about Bruce Campbell as Ash. And I thought he was great in this movie, easily the best character of the movie. But Bruce Campbell just brings this great leading man energy to the film. And like how this was Sam Raimi’s first time directing a movie. This was the first movie that Bruce Campbell starred in, and made him this famous movie story of the last 42 years. And I thought he delivered a really solid performance as Ash.
Finally, I just appreciated how quickly this movie moves along. It’s only 1 hour and 25 minutes long, and it’s efficient as a horror movie and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It might help that I watched this movie the day after I watched Titanic, this 3 hour long historical epic. And this is a quick moving film that is under 90 minutes long.
The Bad:
First thing that comes to mind is that all of the characters besides Bruce Campbell really didn’t work for me. I didn’t find any of them interesting or compelling, and the acting wasn’t good. Like some of the acting in this movie feels like inexperienced actors acting, which is probably what it was. But they just weren’t interesting and weren’t characters that I cared all that much about. And while Bruce Campbell was memorable in the movie, the character of Ash isn’t all that exciting. He gets a WHOLE lot better in the sequels, and so this feels like the prototype for the Ash that we meet later on in this movie.
And I think that some of the effects with this movie look really really dated. And don’t hold up all that well. This movie was made for $350,000 back in the late 1970s, so there wasn’t much that they could do with that kind of money. So some of the practical undead affects they use for the creatures look kind of cheap. And in the finale when they are dissolving, it looks like food and PlayDoh at points in time. So I bet they looked good back in 1981, but in 2023 they don’t look all that good.
Final Thoughts: In general, The Evil Dead (1981) is a solid first film in this franchise. It’s not a great movie, this isn’t one of my favorite movies or horror movies of all time. But it’s an interesting experience to watch Sam Raimi in his very first movie in his directorial career. I did enjoy it, but this isn’t a horror classic for me.
The Score: 8.3/10 (B)
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