Film · 1981
The Evil Dead
Five friends in a remote cabin play an old tape, and wake something that has no intention of leaving them alone.
- Year
- 1981
- Kind of horror
- Cabin, Demonic, Possession, Isolation
A remote cabin, five friends who really should have stayed home, and one old tape nobody should have pressed play on. That is the whole set up, and honestly, that is all you need.
This sits at the properly nasty end of the shelf, not jump scares dressed up as horror, but the slow, sick certainty that something out there is awake now, and interested in the people who woke it. Bodies stop behaving the way bodies should, and it gets messy fast. I would call it full blooded rather than subtle, so know what you are walking into before you press play.
Save it for a night when the heating is off and you already regret the walk out for snacks, because it wants you unsettled before anything has even happened yet. Bruce Campbell anchors the whole thing, and it is the film that started the entire Evil Dead business, which makes it worth knowing if you like seeing where a franchise's nerves first came from.
If you like this, try
28 Years Later
A boy who has never known anything else must get his ill mother to help, decades after Britain's outbreak began.
A Quiet Place
A family must live in near total silence to survive creatures that hunt by sound alone.
Alien
A commercial crew answers a distress call and finds they are not alone on their own ship.
Annabelle Comes Home
The doll comes back into the Warrens' world for a long and difficult night.