The Evil Dead is a veritable abattoir of good taste- a wooded swamp where better judgement goes to die.
The opening scene of The Evil Dead has all the ingredients for a campy and terror laden trek in the woods. Cue up the rusty pickup truck, the menacing and trembling forest, the five hapless sophomoric ne’er do wells. Pleasure aligned with terror. The scene is set and as the car rolls along the poorly maintained road we are greeted with a mood of intense involvement, an anticipation of impending misery that feels bizarrely uplifting.
The tracking shot lends a throbbing quality to the opening scene, providing a new angle of vision through which we can penetrate the creepy potential of the woods. The camera is off kilter, swaying ominously as it captures the calm before the carnage. This is a participatory experience and there’s no getting off this ride.
And right when you thought you’d got a handle on things, the gang finds a book made of human flesh! Nothing like a spooky objet trouve to get the pace going, although this film hardly needs any narrative contrivances to get its brazen plot points across. The trees are alive, people and they kill. The film detours through the trope of the ancient curse to arrive at a place that is wholly outlandish and maddeningly unlikely.
The film acts as an elegy of sorts, an inscrutable farewell to the theme of the happy go lucky cabin in the woods weekend. The Evil Dead is a veritable abattoir of good taste- a wooded swamp where better judgement goes to die.
