Evil Dead II

I knew very little about this film before seeing it and I have not watched the first Evil Dead. As with many films from the era, the special effects feel awfully dated – but that also gives it a certain charm. However, I can’t help but wonder if people felt certain scenes looked a bit dodgy even in 1987, such as the obviously Plasticine decapitated corpse of Ash’s girlfriend dancing naked in stop motion animation. A lot of these kind of sequences meant that I couldn’t take the film seriously, although I presume that that you’re not really meant to anyway.

I suppose the beauty of these kinds of films is that you can’t necessarily tell which scenes were not intentionally funny and/or poorly acted and so it’s hard to find fault with it. The amusing slapstick horror and bizarre unexpected events in the film help to make up for the complete lack of narrative and kept me reasonably interested.

This film is certainly quite unique... I’ll be honest, I can’t remember the last time I saw a film where the protagonist beheads his girlfriend with a mere solitary swing of a conveniently placed shovel after just 6 minutes of screen time. There was a somewhat predictable twist at the end, but I was glad there wasn’t a typical “Hollywood” happy ending that even Horror films seem to get these days.

Upon reflection the ending has made me very curious to watch the sequel, assuming that it picks up where this film left off. But equally I wouldn’t be all that surprised if it had little to do with this film at all and I’m not terribly optimistic that I’ll find explanations to my numerous unanswered questions from part 2.

★★★★☆