The Evil Dead taught me a valuable lesson; if you and your friends are renting a cabin in the woods for vacation, do not get the super cheap option. If it's cheap, it's probably housing a book that will revive formally dormant demons thus possessing all humans within a five mile radius. A lesson I hoped I would never need to learn, but there it is.
I will confess right off the bat that I do not understand why The Evil Dead has the following that it does. It's a decent movie, and the special effects are fantastic considering the "no-names" behind it and the nothing of a budget that they had to work with. But at the same time, it is nothing more than just a slowly paced gore fest. Maybe I'm over-analyzing, maybe I don't know how to have fun anymore with a movie, but I just didn't get as into the film as I wanted to.

I will describe the plot for all two of you squeamish people who have not seen The Evil Dead. The film centers around five 20-somethings who go on a getaway to a cabin in the woods. They find an ancient book of ancientness, read it aloud, and awake the dormant demons to wreak havoc on their vacation and their souls.

Unsurprisingly, the plot is about as basic as it gets, and to its credit that's not the focus. The focus is on the blood and guts and all the creative ways the film can mutilate its victims. The Evil Deadwas clearly made for shock value rather than horror. Case in point, the infamous scene with the tree. For those who have not seen the movie and are less than okay with films like this, I will be vague. The first main character who gets possessed by a demon goes out into the forest then gets attacked by a tree. The scene is squirm-inducing and serves no purpose to the plot whatsoever. The reason she is far from the cabin to begin with is irritating (so much so that I had to pause the film to loudly rationalize to her character why she should not leave the cabin), and the rest of the film does not confirm the idea that getting attacked by branches leads to demonic possession.

I was fine with the gore as I tend to have fun with movies like that, but what I was not too keen on was the slow pacing in between those gory scenes. This film took some patience for me to get through, to the point where I was questioning why it has a Cult Classic Status. Then I read the IMDB trivia section and it all clicked. It is not so much that this film is shocking in its content. It is the fact that it was one of the most shocking horror films to be released at the time, there were bans inflicted on it all across Europe, and master of horror, Stephen King, endorsed the movie including speaking out against said various bans that probably drew people in. It's like the product placement in the recent Power Rangers movie. When Krispy Kreme donuts possess the ultimate weapon to use against Rita Repulsa, don't those donuts suddenly sound a lot more delicious than they already were? Hell yeah they do!
That was probably what drew cult audiences to The Evil Dead more than the film itself. As I said earlier, the main reason to watch it is for the creatively executed gore. It has great practical effects, stunning makeup, and characters that are written with more brain cells than the average good looking horror movie lead but just bland enough that they could have targets on their foreheads. It's a film where the brain is meant to be turned off, I just wish I did not have to wait through so many slow scenes with little atmosphere to get to the brain-turning off parts.
Of course, this film should be seen at least once due to its cult classic status, but take caution as there are plenty of scenes that the squeamish should not throw caution to the wind on. Enjoy and Happy Halloween!