31 Days, 31 Screams: Day 19 (Evil Dead 2)

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

So this isn't technically a movie about the living dead and societal collapse. Whoops. Still, fuck it. There are scary monsters who look like dead people coming after the living. It's close enough for my liking. Evil Dead 2! I've skipped ahead because that's a bit more interesting than the original Evil Dead. I remember liking it, but it's pretty much a straight horror movie. Admirable considering that Sam Raimi barely had two coins to rub together while making the thing, but it's a straight horror movie and shit evolves to be somewhat more interesting. Namely, it gets goofy as shit. I always thought that Evil Dead 2 was a "one foot in the door" kind of movie, where it's still scary and spooky but there's also a playful sense of goofiness. I was a little off in this assumption because Evil Dead 2 is indeed a horror movie. Not that there isn't that goofiness at play, but before we get to that we have ourselves a genuine spooky film. The first 10 minutes are this condensed "remake" of the original. Kids go to cabin in the woods, kids play tape of professor reading from the Book Of The Dead, OH SHIT DEMONS. We even pick up with the POV shot that ended the original Evil Dead as Ash is screaming! What follows is utterly bizarre. Dead girlfriends rising from their graves, pirouetting around like necromantic ballerinas with their heads gone. Ash's own reflection strangling him. Half of this movie is happening, and the other half debatedly isn't. The surreal shit like this is either all a delusion, or the demons are actively fucking with him. Here, then, is where the goofiness comes in. His girlfriend's severed head bites his hand for 45 minutes before he gets the head in a vice, and that's enough to get the demon mojo in it. His hand then begins beating the shit out of him, smashing plates and shit against his own head. That knocks him out and then the hand "sees" a meat cleaver and eagerly begins tugging the body along to get at it and kill. What are we even witnessing here? It's slapstick horror, and it ends with the gruesome inevitability of Ash chainsawing his own goddamned hand off.

Or you'd think so. No, the hand keeps on fucking with him now that it's free. Crawling into the walls, getting caught in a mousetrap, flipping him the bird... and when he does appear to get it? A literal geyser of blood shitblasts him in the face before turning into black ichor before reversing back into the wall. This is demented Looney Tunes or some shit. It's enough to drive someone mad... and, as the entire room starts laughing at him and Ash joins in, you might wonder if that's what's happened. Then more people arrive to the cabin! Fresh fodder to be picked off! That's where the other half of this movie goes, and it's surprising that only one of the four to come to the cabin gets possessed. He didn't even get bit or anything, what happened? It's a strange and surreal sort of base under siege, made all the odder by some of the choices. Like more stop-motion to show a creepy zombie lady's face turn into a monster snake. Or that whooshing POV thing that keeps screeching towards people. Or those absolutely fucked-up tilts. Or the poor girl who gets all fucked up by a tree! That's a callback to the first movie, and thank god she doesn't get literally fucked by the tree because that woulda been bad, to say the least. As if shit couldn't get weirder, our climax involves the cabin being attacked by a giant tree monster that then busts in with a giant monster face! A monster face that bleeds blue when you hit it in the eye with your chainsaw hand! OH FUCK I FORGOT! ASH PUTS A CHAINSAW AROUND HIS STUMP WHERE HIS HAND USED TO BE AND HAS A CHAINSAW HAND NOW! HOLY FUCK, THAT'S GROOVY! You think shit couldn't get any weirder? Well you were wrong because the movie ends with Ash getting sent back in fucking time to the Middle Ages or whatever! That's a plot thread we'll deal with tomorrow, but for now...

...well, that's a movie. Its main draw is being quite unlike anything else out there. Sure, it's a horror movie with monsters coming after people in the woods, which sounds like the most cliche thing ever and would make a good basis for being self-aware of those cliches, but something about this sells it. The fact that they're not zombies, but demons. Or how they actively like to fuck with you because they're demons and demons like to fuck around. Or the increasingly bonkers moments and shots and situations that keep cropping up. I could go on, but this is quite good. It's not my favorite Evil Dead thing though. No, that's tomorrow. In the end, this is a very good horror movie with a brisk 80-minute running time. I appreciate them getting right to it and not really wasting any time, I really do! Brevity is important and I had to sit through 140 minutes of Dawn Of The Dead, which had none of that. This moves along at a clip... but in the end, it's not quite as memorable as its sequel to me. More on that tomorrow, but we're gonna have a fun time. So, to the upcoming movie, all I have to say is...

Give me some sugar, baby.