The Trailer

The Plot

Five friends go up to a cabin in the woods where they find unspeakable evil lurking in the forest. They find the Necronomicon and the taped translation of the text. Once the tape is played, the evil is released. One by one, the teens become deadly zombies. With only one remaining, it is up to him to survive the night and battle the evil dead.
(Source IMDB)

The Breakdown

Who is in it? Bruce Campbell
Genre: Horror
Was it scary? It was pretty decent, yes.
Would this movie be for every horror fan? I’d like to think so.
Should you see it? For sure!

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The Verdict

Bruce Campbell is awesome, and this is one of this first films he ever starred in. This movie was directed by Sam Raimi which also directed the two sequels, ‘Evil Dead II’ and ‘Army of Darkness’. Campbell and Raimi went to high school together and made movies on super-8. Listen to me jabbering on like Joe Bob Briggs lol. This is the part where I say “ok roll the flick” and keep talking about some random stuff. So we start off with 5 friends in a car driving to an abandoned cabin. Upon arriving they venture in the cellar to poke around and find a tape recorder and an old ratty looking book with a face on it with strange gothic illustrations inside. The text in the book seemed to be in some foreign language.

I know now that my wife has become host to a Kandarian demon. I fear that the only way to stop those possessed by the spirits of the book is through the act of… bodily dismemberment.

As the group plays the tape we find out that the man talking has taken a life of solitude to go over his findings in another country. The book they found was the book of the dead and is bound in human flesh and inked in human blood. The man reveals that the words in this book calls forward demons and allows them the right to possess the living, and they cannot truly die unless they are dismembered. As he recites the book over the tape, he awakens the demons. As the friends split up in pairs the fifth person (a female) is sitting alone in her room and hears something outside. As she investigates the noise outside she is basically raped by vines and sticks and possessed. One by one the people in the house get possessed and turn into demonic zombies, except for Ash played by Bruce Campbell.

Ash has to keep his wits and fight the demon zombies and stay alive long enough to see daylight. Apparently daylight means you’re safe and free to go. Upon killing his zombie girlfriend and his other unfortunate friends by burning the book, he is relieved to see daylight spilling in on the room. As he walks outside to get in the car to leave this wretched place behind him, a demon rips through the house and bum rushes him. The End.

The Evil Dead movies were always cool, and Sam Raimi had a pretty cool vision with the POV camera shots of a supposed demon running around and through the house, and the zombies themselves. I rate this movie a 7/10 for its unique camera work and cool ideas.

Official Nutshell-Movies Explanation

The Evil Dead (1981): Five friends get possessed and killed when they play a translation of the book of the dead in an abandoned cabin.