A young supermarket attendant named Ash takes his girlfriend, Linda, to a secluded cabin in the woods for a romantic get away. But when Ash finds a tape recorder containing a recording of a professor reciting passages from an ancient text, the Necronomicon, he soon realizes it has accidentally unleashed ancient demonic spirits.
The spirits possess Linda, turning her in to a hideous Deadite, and the night just gets worse from there. Soon the professor's daughter arrives with a peculiar entourage and they begin to get knocked off and/or possessed one by one. Finally Ash is forced to make his transition from supermarket attendant to chainsaw wielding, boom stick blasting, super hero in order to defeat the Deadites and stay alive.
While Evil Dead 2 does not follow from the story line of the first film, it shares many similarities in terms of plot. So, it isn't a sequel in the strictest sense, but neither is it really a remake. It's more of a re-visioning of Evil Dead with a bigger budget, more special effects, and a heavy dose of slapstick.
Evil Dead 2 holds true to the basics of the series as laid out in the original Evil Dead and its little known predecessor, Within the Woods, but it is a lot more fun and less scary than the original. In that sense there is a major shift in focus which continued through the third film, Army of Darkness. Of course this is also the film wherein Ash begins to transform into the cocky, arrogant, but also goofy, tough guy as opposed to the quivering scaredy cat who spends way too much time trapped under bookcases in the first film.
This film is undoubtedly a classic, part of one of the most widely known and loved horror series in history. What's not to love; chainsaw hands, flying eyeballs, blood geysers, you name it. But for me, it will always be second to the scarier, grittier, original Evil Dead, which did so much with so little and did it all so well.
5 flying eyeballs out of 5
Unrated: contains violence, gore, frightening scenes, nudity, language.
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