Night 11 of 31 Nights of Horror

I’m writing this now with twenty minutes still to go in this movie because I’m bored. With more time to work on the script, and a much bigger budget I was hoping Evil Dead 2 would show Sam Raimi’s growth as a filmmaker, but just didn’t like it and I’m obviously in the minority here because the average ratings for this sequel are higher than the original.

Maybe I’m just not the right audience for this one. I liked how the first started sombre and became weird and outrageous at the end. Number 2 starts out weird, then just puts the pedal to the floor and rides the crazy to the end. Obviously some people loved that, well, most people judging by the 88% rotten tomato score, but I preferred the first one.

I get the feeling that Sam Raimi has a love/hate relationship with this series. I don’t know him, and I’ve never heard him talk about the films, but he’s essentially made the same movie three times. While wikipedia says this is a sequel to the first, it tells the same story, minus the three friends that went to the cabin with Ashley and Linda in the original. Without these people the first half of the story is Ash alone, running from the camera, beating on a mannequin head and fighting himself for over 30 minutes. That’s when I got bored and nothing in the second half pulled me back in.

The other thing I noticed was that very early on, they start setting up another sequel. It’s like the filmmakers really wanted to make the third movie, didn’t like how the first ended and wanted to re-do it so as to set things up better for Army of Darkness and did just that, calling it Evil Dead 2. Then of course he let other people re-make it again in 2013.

The increased budget obviously went into the effects. Bigger makeup, whole body latex suits, enormous mechanical trees, even more blood than the first, and this time in four different colours. The camera movement was less interesting this time as well. It’s like with a bigger budget, they focused more on the visual effects side of things than on using the camera itself to better alter the mood and feel of the film

Overall, it was a disappointment to me, given how much I enjoyed, not just the first one, but so many of Sam Raimi’s other movies. Drag me to Hell was great and The Quick and the Dead is one of my favourite westerns, I watch it almost once a year.

You can stream Evil Dead 2 for free with ads on Plex. I’m personally glad I didn’t pay to watch it.