The Evil Dead (1981)

 

Genre: Horror/ Fantasy 

Time: 1h 25mins

Director: Sam Raimi

Quick Summary: Five friends travel to a cabin in the woods, where they unknowingly release flesh-possessing demons.

Groovy

Honesty I can see why this sparked a massive cult following. Though this is super enjoyable, it sort of doesn't hold up to today's standard sadly, they came across as more funny than scary now, but looking at it for the time it came out, this would have been terrifying.

 The stop-motion sequence towards the end looks fake compared to the rest of the movie, but it was impressive for the time it was made and the budget it had if you actually think about it. Since the production budgets were limited, the camera and atmosphere were used a lot more to create scary vibes like this.  The shaky camera and unusual camera angles and movements gave a sense of frantic chaos to the scenes. The tracking shot used during a demon chase around the cabin was particularly nauseating as it went back and forth between two the two but followed them both around things. 

At the beginning of this, I wouldn't say it's boring, but it's very all over the place. Things all happen at once and it feels like they really wanted to skip this part and just get to the demon. It honestly takes a long while to actually get into the demon stuff. I found it comical and I just couldn't help but laugh at how comical some of the scenes were as the lines of dialogue were awful at times and came across more like a B-movie. 

If you like gore though, this is certainly a bloody splatter fest. With each kill, though the attacks look pretty silly, they all squirt out blood, or this white liquid when a Demon is killed and honestly it's all pretty gross. Something else with this film, it is extremely violent. I mean this is like incredibly brutal at times, even if the things look fake, it's still a bit of a shock watching them play out. 

If you're a fan of old-school horror, give this a go. If not, give it a go anyway to see how the franchise started out. 

6/10

"Scotty: [Taunting Cheryl by whispering] Dead bodies in the cellar. Dead bodies in the...

Cheryl: Will you stop it!"