Sam Raimi – ‘The Evil Dead’
Sometimes there is nothing scarier than feeling isolated from the outer world, from reality and from normality. Such explains why so many of the greatest horror stories of all time play out in creaking mansions miles away from civilisation. Indeed, little separates the terror of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher from Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece Alien, with the latter merely replacing groaning floorboards and dusty basements with clanging metal walkways and claustrophobic ventilation shafts.
Whilst Sam Raimi probably didn’t have Poe in mind when he created The Evil Dead, he would have certainly cast his eyes back to such past successes as Delmer Daves’ 1947 film The Red House and Jack Woods’ 1970 horror flick Equinox, two ‘cabin in the woods’ movies which take the genre into the 20th century, informing how Raimi constructed his own tale. Though, instead of ghosts haunting their old residences, The Evil Dead introduces us to a new kind of evil, something malevolent, nasty and utterly perfect for the eccentricity of 1980s filmmaking.
Falling in line with other slasher horror movies like Friday the 13th and Halloween, Raimi chooses a group of vulnerable teenagers to be the victims in The Evil Dead. Each students of Michigan State University, the teens are led by the loose protagonist, Ash (Bruce Campbell), an initially level-headed hero who is joined by his sister, Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker) and two friends, Scott (Richard DeManincor) and Shelly (Theresa Tilly).
Arriving at a remote cabin for a short getaway, the gang quickly begin to experience a number of supernatural oddities before the cellar trapdoor is flung open by its own accord whilst they eat dinner. Descending the stairs, Ash and Scott discover not a classic brittle skeleton but the Naturom Demonto, a version of the Book of the Dead, as well as a tape recorder which holds the voice of archaeologist Raymond Knowby.
By playing Knowby’s discoveries out loud, they mistakenly release a demonic entity which snaps Raimi’s film into life, doing away with any ghostly subtleties to fully embrace a barmy, ghoulish horror. The pre-recorded incantation sets off a chain reaction of events, awakening some sort of ancient spirit that resides in the spirit forest, breathing through the soil and reproducing through twisted branches. Such is illustrated when Cheryl exits the cabin to investigate a strange noise in the forest. Venturing deeper into the trees, she is suddenly grabbed by tree branches, roots and vines that proceed to rape her in a sequence that feels tonally misplaced within an otherwise playful genre flick.
Indeed, The Evil Dead works at its very best when it’s toying with genre conventions, approaching horror as a devilish imp of the forest might in a twisted fairytale, injecting perky fiendishness and cheeky comedy. As plucky young filmmakers themselves, the team behind the DIY horror translate their own verve to the movie, crafting a distinct cinematic style alongside an unearthly soundtrack and their own icky special effects that take the ingenuity of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and adds a dose of bizarre ‘80s spunk.
Raimi’s film can certainly be considered in the same category as such aforementioned ‘cabin in the woods’ horror flicks, but there’s an urge for cinematic mischief that elevates his film beyond others of its kind. This is not a horror movie that feels like the product of greedy movie studios looking to make money from young bloodthirsty audiences, this is an independent production from a team of creatives looking to break the mould of safe horror filmmaking, offering something entirely new, bold and, in many ways, revolutionary.
