Monday, March 10, 2008

Evil Dead 2

     Although a sequel, this movie seems more like a remake. The first movie (The Evil Dead) was made to be scary and came out rather humorous. Sam Raimi decided to redo the movie, this time trying to make it funny but ultimately came out much scarier. It's basically the same story as the first movie, only done in a much more professional way. Widely successful, it employed better special effects, stranger characters, and a jazzed-up version of the original story about finding the Necronomicon: Book of the Dead and releasing demons that can possess human flesh. 

      Anyway, the story goes like this. Ash and his girlfriend vacation in a small cabin deep in the woods. Ash finds a tape recorder in the cellar, plays the demon resurrection chants, and soon the trees attack and kill his girlfriend Linda. She becomes possessed, he chops her head off with a shovel and buries her. He soon becomes possessed himself, but the rising sun saves him from being possessed for too long as the demons are forced back into the woods by the sunlight. He makes for the bridge, but suspiciously the bridge has been mangled, making an escape out of there impossible. The sun soon sets as Ash tries to make it back to the cabin. 

      We learn that the incantations recited on the tape recorder were made by an archaeologist and his wife. Their daughter is also an archaeologist and has the missing pages of the Necronomicon needed to dispel the evil. Linda soon pops out of her grave and proceeds to torture Ash, so he takes her to the tool shed and gives her the ol' slice and dice with a chainsaw. 

      Now that Linda is out of the way, his own hand becomes possessed and keeps attacking him. He cuts it off puts it in a trash can and sets some books on it so the hand can't get out. Ironically, one of the books he uses is the Ernest Hemingway novel "A Farewell to Arms". 

      Meanwhile, the daughter shows up at the bridge and is met by a hillbilly couple that demands money to show the daughter a trail to the cabin. Still at the cabin, Ash starts losing his mind when all the furniture starts laughing at him, including a demented deer head on the wall (this scene alone is worth watching this movie.) The daughter and the hillbilly couple make it to the cabin and by the looks of it (blood everywhere and a bloody chainsaw in the corner) it appears that Ash has killed her parents, so they throw him down into the fruit cellar. 

      As the daughter listens to the tape recorder, the professor states that his wife had become possessed and he has buried her in the earthen floor of the cellar. Henrietta (the mom) pops up and goes for Ash. He is rescued just in time by the people upstairs. Hillbilly's wife Bobbi Jo freaks and runs into the woods... a VERY bad move. She gets attacked by the trees and dragged through the forest and eventually smushed into a tree. 

      Buford Butthead (Bobbi Jo's hubby) grabs the missing pages and throws them down in the cellar and demands that the others help him look in the woods for his stupid wife. When he's attacked, the others high tail it back to the cabin. Thankfully, he gets too close to the cellar door and Henrietta gets a hold of him and chows down. 

      The missing pages are crucial in dispelling the evil, therefore Ash and Annie (the professor's daughter) must get into the cellar but not before having to kill Henrietta. She mutates into some long-necked monster. Ash uses his chainsaw to sever her head and arms in order to get into the basement. The pages are retrieved from the cellar and evidently, there are three passages that must be recited. One to make the evil appear in the flesh, one to open a rift in time and space, and one to force the evil into the rift. Unfortunately, Annie is killed by Ash's severed hand and only gets to recite the first two passages. 

      The evil appears and is forced into the rift, unfortunately, there is no way to close the rift, so Ash and a few other things (like his car) are sucked into the rift and end up in another dimension. The place he ends up looks very medieval and he's greeted by knights with swords drawn. Some evil bat creature swoops down from the sky. Ash instinctively shoots it down (he's a pro at this by now). The knights are amazed and hail him as a new king. Ash is not amused by this, but it sets the stage for the third movie titled "Army of Darkness" where Ash must fight a war against the "Deadites". 

      Frankly, I found Evil Dead Part 3, better known as "Army of Darkness" to be a terrible movie that can only be enjoyed if you're REALLY into "Three Stooges" type of humor. Stick with Evil Dead 2, it's by far the best out of the whole trilogy. A remake of the original was made in 2013, which bypassed all the humor and went straight for the gore and terror.  Not a bad remake actually, I've definitely seen worse.  A sequel to the remake came out about ten years later that takes place in an apartment complex, completely breaking from the cabin in the woods theme present in all the previous Evil Dead movies.

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