The Evil Dead (1981)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1981
	Director: Sam Raimi (Spider-Man 1-3, Drag me to Hell)
	Actors: Bruce Campbell (My Name is Bruce, Alien Apocalypse), Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror
	Conditions of visioning: 21.09.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: A group of friends heads to a cabin in the woods for the week-end. In the basement they find an old book and a tape recorder.
Review: Similarly to Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, The Evil Dead is the first feature film of a director that started with the Horror genre to end up delivering blockbusters for Hollywood twenty years later. And what a beginning! This movie seems to have participated to the start of a whole sub-genre of "cabin in the woods" movies, culminating with the recent homage/redefinition of the genre properly entitled The Cabin in the Woods. I watched it in the perfect conditions, alone at night and slightly tired i.e. more sensitive to jump-scares. The recent Blu-ray edition shows the movie at its best given the aged 16 mm original format it was filmed in. The sound is also well mixed and rightfully so, as it contributes to the atmosphere of the movie. I love that The Evil Dead is full of energy and shows the talent of the director for using crazy and innovative camera angles, in particular extreme close-ups and travelling in fast-forward at ground level. The limited budget is obviously apparent, but compensated by an increasing madness that leads to the creation of the anti-hero Ash played by a very young Bruce Campbell then, and that we will follow in two more movies that I will definitely watch soon: Evil Dead 2 (a hidden remake with a much larger budget) and Army of Darkness. I am also motivated by the imminent release of the sequel mini-series Ash vs. The Evil Dead.
Rating: 8 /10