On April 21, in most cinemas, we will be able to follow two sisters and their offspring during a stay in a cabin deep in the woods. The film called Evil Dead Rise (The Opera of Terror: Rebirth), let’s bet that nothing good awaits them there, even if the action then moves to a building in town. In fact, if there is a lesson to be learned from the saga evil Deadincluding the original film, The Evil Dead (The Opera of Terror), premiered more than 40 years ago, is that you should never, ever venture into a cabin deep in the woods. What attests, with blood and humor, the aftermath, remakesTV series and other musical shows.
Sam Raimi, future director of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse madness), had just turned 20 when filming began for The Evil Deador the nightmare of five young people attacked by a demonic entity during a “vacation” in said cabin.
A hut, and an argument, which will inspire many subsequent films, from cabin fever (black fever) To Knock at the Cabin (The lonely cabin) through the aptly named Cabin in the Woods (The cabin in the woods). On reflection, however, we can see in this typical setting a simple evolution of the august haunted castle or the Gothic mansion lost in the moor.
Anyway, it is with a small budget and the support of his family that Raimi sinks into a swampy area of Tennessee, at the end of 1979. Bruce Campbell, his best friend, embodies the protagonist Ash, and Robert Tapert, his college roommate, acts as producer.
With very limited resources, the budding director must use ingenuity, especially for the sequences where an invisible entity rushes through the trees: we tinker with improbable armatures, we attach the camera to a bicycle, we even make it slide on petroleum jelly…
Many fans of “The Evil Dead” appreciate the way the film alternates between suspense, atmosphere, shock, gore and comedy. […].
Raimi favors outrageous angles and multiplies the visual finds dependent on his recent past as a magician. Cameraman on the film, Tim Philo confides in the book The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi “There were times on The Evil Dead where I was like “Sam, that’s a good idea, but it’s going to be funny”, and he was like “It doesn’t matter, as long as the audience and I don’t get bored. Whether he is scared, panicked or laughing, these are all good reactions”. »
The mowed special effects reflect this bias, especially the passages using stop-motion animation (stop-motion). Constant, the breaks in tone range from almost burlesque humor to frank horror. To note Kate Egan in 2002 in her essay The Evil Dead : ” Numerous fans of The Evil Dead appreciate the way the film alternates suspense, atmosphere, shock, gore and comedy, a strategy that allows the film to have fun with the audience while maintaining its disturbing side. »
And disturbing side, there is. One thinks of this sequence during which Cheryl is raped in the forest by an interlacing of “possessed” branches. At San Diego Reader, Sam Raimi will admit in 2012 to regret the inclusion of this scene: “It was unnecessarily gratuitous and brutal. »
Instant cult movie
On its release in 1983, after a premiere in 1981 and a passage to the Cannes market in 1982, the film made big receipts despite its X classification, which, in the United States, deprived it of quantity of rooms. With a laudatory quote from the already very popular writer Stephen King as an advertisement, the public is nevertheless at the rendezvous. Even more so when the film appears on VHS. Banned in the United Kingdom, where he is listed in the infamous directory of ” Video Nasty », The Evil Dead sees its cult status grow rapidly.
So that in 1987, Raimi, Campbell and Tapert returned with Evil Dead II: Dead at Dawn (opera of terror 2), roughly one remake of the first film endowed with a little more means, control and humor (the live severed hand at the Addams Familylily, the chainsaw grafted to the arm, etc.). Like the first film, the sequel received an enthusiastic reception. In the Chicago Sun-Timesthe influential Roger Ebert begins his criticism thus: Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn is a comedy disguised as a blood-soaked “choc-a-rama”. On the surface, it looks like a routine horror movie, a vomitorium designed to separate teenagers from their lunch. But look a little closer, and you’ll realize that the film is quite a sophisticated satire. »
If the box office is more disappointing this time, the film is snapped up in video clubs. Hence, in 1992, Army of Darkness (army of darkness), in which Ash (again Bruce Campbell) is projected into the Middle Ages by the Necronomicon, an evil grimoire present in all the films.
Here, Raimi spoils himself by integrating into his cinematographic universe a plethora of works that marked his childhood, including the novel by Mark Twain A Yankee at King Arthur’s Courtand the movie Jason and the Argonauts (Jason and the Argonauts): the memorable battalion of skeletons in volume animation once imagined by Ray Harryhausen is the subject of a wacky tribute.
The reviews are still rather positive, and the recipes, correct, but we feel the breathlessness. Raimi, who in the meantime has made Darkman, on a vengeful superhero, also wishes to demonstrate the extent of his palette. As shown by The Quick and the Dead (instinct for revenge), a hyperstylized western, A Single Plane (A simple map), an ultracynical neon noir… Until Spidermanin 2002, the first of a lucrative trilogy devoted to the famous superhero.
A participatory show
However, despite his success as a director and producer (through his company Ghost House Pictures), Raimi returns irresistibly to evil Dead. First in 2013, with a “ reboot (or semi-remake or continuation: there is disagreement on the question) signed Fede Alvarez, and of which he is one of the producers with Bruce Campbell and Robert Tapert, then between 2015 and 2018, with the series Ash vs Evil Dead, where he reunites with Campbell as Demon Hunter Ash. Without forgetting the bloody Evil Dead: The Musicalpremiered on stage in 2003, with his permission.
As for Evil Dead Rise, he brings back the original trio — Raimi, Campbell, Tapert — as producers. This is Irish director Lee Cronin (The Hole in the Ground) who writes and directs. During its premiere at South by Southwest (SxSW), the film plunged audiences and critics into macabre jubilation: a recurring phenomenon in the saga, which critic Vincent Canby noted as early as 1983.
” [The Evil Dead] is a great participative show. It’s intriguing enough to captivate audiences […] and absurd enough to invite this one to answer him”, he wrote then in the New York Times.
This means that, against all logic, we are once again in a hurry to venture into this damned “cabin in the depths of the woods”. And beyond.