Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘The Evil Dead’

Written by Scott Edwards and John Edward Betancourt

'We're going to get you. We're going to get you. Not another peep. Time to go to sleep.'
​- Evil Linda

Scott's Review
No harm could ever come from reading a book… right?  You may think that but hidden within the pages of all books is a brilliance that can help transform your life if you let it. This might be hard to believe, but books carry more power than people are willing to give them credit for and although reading seems to be a lost art while movies are blowing them away, there are still those who find it more comforting to read and let their imaginations run wild than to see what someone else’s take of it is on the big screen.

On spring break, Ash, Linda, Scott, Shelly and Cheryl are on their way to a cabin in the woods. Thinking this will be the perfect getaway, the group is ready to let down their guard and just have a good time. But there is something strange about the cabin as Cheryl quickly finds out when she is taken over by a force and draws something that she has never seen before. While eating dinner, the cellar door flies open, inviting the group down and while nobody really wants to know what opened the door, Scott will rise to the challenge.

Finding a room hidden in the back of the cellar, Scott and Ash find some strange things. Bringing up a tape recorder and an old book, the group is in for a story that will change their lives forever. Playing the tape, the group finds out that the book’s name is the Naturum De Montum, also known as the Book of the Dead. The tape explains that the book was written to conjure up demons from their sleep and allows them to infest the living. While nobody believes this is real, they continue to play the tape, but when the words are spoken from the book, they awaken something deep in the woods.

When the fun is over, everyone heads off to bed, but Cheryl is hearing voices outside of the window. Heading out to investigate, she is attacked by the trees and barely makes it back to the cabin before something worse happens to her. Not wanting to spend an extra minute in the cabin, she convinces Ash to take her back to town, but the bridge is out and there is no way of escaping until morning. While trying to gather her thoughts by the window, something demonic takes over her body and she promises to take everyone in the cabin one by one. Not truly understanding what is happening to their friend, the rest of the group tries to calm her down, but the demon's strength is too much for them to handle and they lock her in the cellar.  

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Thinking that everything is okay, the evil starts taking over the rest of the group…one by one. When Shelly becomes the next possessed, Scott is forced to take her out the way the tape said to do, by cutting off her limbs. When all is said and done, Scott has to get out of the cabin but comes back telling the same tale that Cheryl gave everyone before the evil claimed her. The trees know. When Linda wakes up from her nap, she is next on evil’s list to be possessed, yet she does not show the aggression of the others, but she is holding back. Her transformation leaves Ash with the decision of a lifetime, since he knows the only way to keep her at bay is to take her limbs as well and with the love that the two have for each other, he may not be able to follow through. As sunrise gets closer and with nobody to help him, Ash has to find a way to survive while the demons run rampant inside and outside of the cabin.

This is just a wonderful little horror flick that features everything that you could ever dream of. You get to watch Ash grow as a character right in front of your eyes. In the beginning, he is afraid of everything, but you can see what the situation has done to him and during his quest for survival, he is forced to do things that he normally would never do. I love the possessed, they are great, and all have their own way to deliver the scares, and sometimes all you need is a big smile to frighten someone. Stay Scared.

John's Review
I remember the first time I came across The Evil Dead. I was a teenager and believe or it not folks, video stores still existed. This one was just up the road from where I grew up and, on this day, like every time I visited the store, I was parked in the horror section. I made it a habit to rent something new every week and for some reason, I had missed this title, until this particular day.

I lifted up the box and read the description and while it seemed like a generic synopsis, I gave it a shot, took it home and never looked back. Only because Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead left me in awe. Set in the middle of nowhere in a remote cabin, five college kids have decided to get away for the weekend. But their discovery of a hideous book bound in flesh and inked in blood leads to an evening of unbridled terror when their curiosity of the book unleashes an unrelenting evil.  

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​If there is one word to describe this film, it is simplicity. Shot on a shoestring budget The Evil Dead is clearly a labor of love from Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell who used their lack of funds to fuel their imagination in so many different ways, starting with how the movie was filmed. Raimi uses the camera itself as a special effect, disorienting you at times, and making you completely uncomfortable before something horrible happens with the monsters on screen.  

Yet that is only the beginning. The story itself is equally as simple. There's no powerhouse back story for the evil that roams, or the characters for that matter and that too lends to the movie's magic. By not knowing these people or fully understanding their situation, we are merely observers for the wholesale torture that they go through and that somehow makes it worse. We don't know if these are good human beings or bad ones, just that they are being torn apart and that unique twist is what makes the film so incredibly scary.  

The Evil Dead has been called 'The ultimate experience in grueling terror' and that label is pretty damn accurate. Because for the majority of its 85-minute running time we are as trapped as those poor people in the cabin, and our consolation prize for stepping out into the sunlight is wondering what that noise was outside once the sun has gone down.  

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