Sam Raimi’s follow up to his 1981 masterpiece takes the Evil Dead franchise to the outer realms of reality. Does this detract from the body horror we saw in 1980, or does this sequel hold up?
This review DOES contain spoilers.
When we last leave Ash, his body had been attacked by “The Evil.” This evil does in fact possess Ash, but is gone by morning. We see Ash return to the cabin, with his only escape via bridge destroyed. There, he begins to hallucinate. The taxidermy deer head on the wall starts it’s torment of Ash, driving him almost to insanity.
This first bit of hallucination is a glimpse into what we can expect from this movie; a slap-stick gore parody of the original, and boy, is there gore.
The most memorable bit of gore in this movie come from Jake, who after getting stabbed by Annie mistaking him for Ash, gets dragged to the cellar by the deadite Henrietta, who kills him in one of the bloodiest off-screen kills ever. The amount of blood pouring out of the cellar door is enough to satisfy even the most strongest of stomachs.
Another great bit of gore comes from Ash himself. After his hand is possessed by “The Evil,” he must amputate the hand as to not allow the entity to take over his whole body. This pre-127 Hours move is equally disturbing, as Ash decides that the best weapon to use would be a chainsaw.
This movie is in many ways both similar and horribly different from its predecessor. Sam Raimi drew on the cult-classicness of his first film, and decided to up the ante. The gore is there, but the seriousness is not. Becoming more self-aware, this movie knows what the audience wants, and strays in every other direction.
One of my personal favorite moments is when Ash decides to take “The Evil” one-on-one. He needs a weapon, so naturally, as any sane person would do, attaches the chainsaw to his stump of a hand. Sawing off the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun, Bruce Campbell delivers the movie’s best line: “Groovy.”
After taking “The Evil” on and defeating Henrietta, the trees close in. As they do, Annie recites the final incantation, opening a wormhole, sending Ash, his boomstick, the entity, and Ash’s ’88 Oldsmobile into a vortex, sending him to the year 1300 A.D., where he is mistaken for a deadite. After displaying his boomstick and killing a real deadite, Ash is taken for a hero. He is obviously shaken and starts to breakdown, ending the film and setting up the third film in the series, Army of Darkness.
This film is equal parts terrifying, funny, and gory. Performing better than its predecessor at the box office, this film takes the cult-classic horror genre and turns it on its head, creating a parody of the original that stays humble, yet knows where it wants to go. At times it’s silly, but that does not detract from the scare-ability of this film.
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