Amazon.com video review:
Writer-director Sam Raimi's extremely stylized, blood-soaked
follow-up to his creepy Evil Dead isn't
really a sequel; rather, it's a remake on a better budget. It also
isn't really a horror film (though there are plenty of decapitations,
zombies, supernatural demons, and gore) as much as it is a hilarious,
sophisticated slapstick send-up of the terror genre. Raimi takes every
horror convention that exists and exaggerates it with mind-blowing
special effects, crossed with mocking Three Stooges humor. The plot
alone is a genre cliché right out of any number of horror
films. Several teens (including our hero, Ash, played by Bruce
Campbell in a manic tour-de-force of physical comedy) visit a
broken-down cottage in the woods--miles from civilization--find a copy
of the Book of the Dead, and unleash supernatural powers that gut
every character in sight. All, that is, except Ash, who takes this
very personally and spends much of the of the film getting his head
smashed while battling the unseen forces. Raimi uses this bare-bones
story as a stage to showcase dazzling special effects and eye-popping
visuals, including some of the most spectacular point-of-view
Steadicam work ever (done by Peter Deming). Although it went unnoticed
in the theaters, the film has since become an influential cult-video
favorite, paving the way for over-the-top comic gross-out films like
Peter Jackson's Dead
Alive. The DVD
version presents the film in its original 1:85 to 1 aspect ratio,
and includes the theatrical trailer. --Dave McCoy
