Movie Review: Evil Dead 2 (1987) directed by Sam Raimi
Ashley “Ash” J. Williams (Bruce Campbell) has located an isolated cabin for he and his girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler) to spend some quality time together. He’s pretty sure the owners aren’t present. And indeed, when the young couple arrives, they find the place empty, though it still has electricity and running water, and is nicely furnished and roomy. But there a tape recorder, revealing that the owner is a Professor Knowby, who has acquired a copy of the Necronomicon and proceeds to read aloud from it. This alerts the already-summoned evil in the woods that there are fresh souls in the cabin. By dawn, Linda has been killed and transformed into an evil Deadite, and Ash is much the worse for wear.
Ash attempts to escape the area, only to find that the bridge has been destroyed, and he barely makes it back to the cabin by nightfall. But the cabin itself is no safe refuge. The evil can control furniture, deliver grade-A hallucinations, and eventually turns Ash’s own right hand against him. And that’s before we get into the Deadites!
Meanwhile Annie Knowby (Sarah Berry), daughter of the professor, and Ed Getley (Richard Domeier), his assistant, head in from the airport with additional pages and materials regarding the Necronomicon. When the bridge is discovered to be out, they hire two locals, Jake (Dan Hicks) and Bobby Joe (Kassie Wesley DePaiva) to guide them up the back path. By the time the quartet arrives, Ash is so messed up it’s understandable that they mistake him for the menace. The path vanishes, and the Deadites close in. Will anyone one survive, or will they all be dead by dawn?
Evidently, this movie was originally planned to be a direct sequel to The Evil Dead but rights issues prevented Mr. Raimi from using scenes from that movie as a prologue to establish how Ash got to the point the new characters find him at. So the first twenty minutes are an abbreviated version of the first film’s story, cutting out expendable characters and subplots.
This works very well, as Bruce Campbell sells the swift journey from terrified citizen to traumatized survivor to slightly crazed badass.
The rest of the cast gets shallow characterization, and we have to use small cues like Jake’s dog tags to help fill in the blanks.
This is a horror-comedy with many of the moments being silly to look at, even if they would be terrifying to live through. That is clearly more blood than any one human body has inside of it, for one example.
The movie’s shot well, and has a very good sequel hook that leads directly into Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness. Which I also recommend.
Content note: Lots of violence, often extremely gory. Some corpses are naked. This movie is rated “R” for a reason.
Overall, this is an awesome horror movie for the type of fan that enjoys a good bloodbath and jokes.
