[HorrorScience] Evil Dead 2 (1987)

I recently commented The Evil Dead by Sam Raimi. A film that today is considered cult (at least among the B-movie audience), but that at the time gave its producers a lot of problems because its bloody and daring content attracted too much attention from the censors.

Sam Raimi continued his career as a director, but after a few years he decided to continue the story of Ash, the only survivor of the previous film, with Evil Dead 2. As it could not be otherwise, the title of the film was changed in several countries, so it is also known as Terrifyingly dead (Spain) The Devil Awakens 2 (Mexico) Evil Dead 2: Amazing Night (Argentina) and The diabolical dead 2 (Peru).

When making this film, Raimi decided to start from the same point where the first film ended, with Ash leaving the forest cabin at dawn, however this film could be considered a sequel and a half-remake of the first part, since at the beginning of the film we will briefly summarize what happened in The Evil Dead, but adding some notable changes, such as that according to this movie, only Ash and his girlfriend Linda were in the cabin when everything happened, the characters of Cheryl, Scott and Shelly disappearing from the story.

The film begins by showing us Ash (Bruce Campbell) and his girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler) driving to a secluded cabin located in a forest to spend a weekend alone. Inside the cabin, instead of privacy, they will find the Necronomicon, the book of the dead, and the recordings of the owner of the cabin, who was the one who discovered the book and deciphered its contents. After listening to the recordings, Linda becomes possessed by a demon and Ash ends up killing her in self-defense.

When dawn arrives, Ash decides to leave the house, but at the last moment (which corresponds to the end of the first part) a demon possesses him too. Fortunately, the light of day saves Ash, who remains unconscious for a few hours, so when he wakes up he tries to escape in a hurry with his car, to discover that the bridge that would return him to civilization has been destroyed. Because it begins to get dark, Ash ends up barricading himself in the cabin, where he will be attacked again by the corpse of his girlfriend, who is still possessed.

The nightmare does not seem to have an end, because after finishing off his girlfriend using a chainsaw, the exhausted protagonist begins to notice that his hand does not obey him and tries to kill him in every possible way, so that he has no other option but to amputate it with the chainsaw.

At the same time, the daughter of the owner of the cabin, Annie (Sarah Berry) and her partner Ed Getley (Richard Domeier) head towards the cabin with the help of Jake (Dan Hicks) and Bobby Joe (Kassie Wesley) who will show them a way, after finding the bridge destroyed.

Annie carries a few pages of the Necronomicon and heads to the cabin to talk to her father so she can look at the entire book to complete her research. However, when they enter the house they find Ash, completely crazy, with his clothes torn and completely covered in wounds and blood, so they think he is a madman who has sneaked into the house and they lock him in the basement.

Little time will pass until Ash is attacked by the corpse of Annie's mother (which was buried in the basement) and asks for help from the newcomers who will get him out of there while facing the possessed corpse, which ends up imprisoned in the basement again.

As we all assume, that is just the beginning, since the inhabitants of the house begin to fall under the demonic influence, becoming possessed just as happened in the first film, the difference is that now Ash could consider himself a veteran in killing monsters, so, armed with his shotgun and chainsaw, he decides to stand up to them.

Evil Dead 2 shows us What the first film would have been like if it had a bigger budget, the fact that they retell the story of The Evil Dead and some ideas and scenes are reused, it increases that sensation significantly.

However, in this film there are also important advances that will mark the saga, to begin with a voluntary and very notable comic touch is added, in which Bruce Campbell finds himself like a fish in water, and it also goes deeper into the history and powers of the Necronomicon.

The special effects have improved greatly and most of them have aged well, plus there is a wide variety of crazy situations that make this film tremendously unpredictable, thus increasing its charm.

In general I think Sam Raimi knew how to find a perfect balance between horror and comedy, because he was able to take advantage of everything he learned with the first part and improve it in practically all aspects.

Movie trivia:

• In one scene you can see Freddy Krueger's glove, it was included as a thank you to Wes Craven, because in a scene of A Nightmare on Elm Street, you can see The Evil Dead on a television.
• Annie's zombie mother is played by Ted Raimi, Sam Raimi's brother.
• For the initial part of the film, scenes from The Evil Dead, but because the rights to that film had ended up with different distributors depending on the country, it was faster and easier to reshoot the scenes than to try to get the rights to use them again.