Evil Dead II
1987 · Directed by Sam Raimi
Original language: English
- horror
- comedy
- fantasy
The story
Ash Williams and his girlfriend Linda find a log cabin in the woods with a voice recording from an archeologist who had recorded himself reciting ancient chants from "The Book of the Dead." As they play the recording an evil power is unleashed taking over Linda's body.
What it’s like
Frantic, kinetic camerawork inside a single wooden cabin, with the lens whipping through the woods in wide swooping arcs and crash-zooming into faces, all of it lit in lurid reds and sickly greens against hard black shadow. The grain is coarse and the practical effects are gleefully tactile: stop-motion-like stutters, rubbery prosthetics, geysers of thick red-black fluid and a sound design of creaking timber, guttural whooshes and screeching strings that never lets up. Its vibe is slapstick mayhem, a cartoonish splatter-comedy that tips between genuine dread and pure giddy absurdity. It suits a Halloween night with friends, a loud late-night watch with the lights low, or a rewatch when you want something energetic and ridiculous. The pacing is relentless, the emotional register broad and playful, and the central arc is a bumbling, increasingly exasperated hero forced to fight off his own possessed companions and the forest around him. Violence is constant and very bloody, with dismemberment, gore and a chainsaw, but it is overtly comic in its excess rather than grim, and there is little sexual content. For horror fans who enjoy gleeful, over-the-top gore played for laughs, and for anyone who wants a loud, sticky, absurd fright rather than a quiet one.
More films like Evil Dead II
Closest in mood, pacing and theme. Tell us why you loved Evil Dead IIand we’ll explain which ones fit you.
