As Halloween is fast approaching, the Fanbase Press staff and contributors decided that there was no better way to celebrate this horrifically haunting holiday than by sharing our favorite scary stories! Be they movies, TV shows, video games, novels, or any other form of entertainment, members of the Fanbase Press crew will be sharing their “scariest” stories each day leading up to Halloween. We hope that you will enjoy this sneak peek into the terrors that frighten Fanbase Press!
In 1981, Sam Raimi’s low-budget indie horror film, Evil Dead, burst onto the scene, redefining the genre and setting a new standard for terror. While the concept of imperiled teens (Ash, Scott, Cheryl, Shelly, and Linda) in remote locations was not new, Raimi’s masterpiece elevated this trope with innovative techniques, practical effects, and a perfect balance of horror and dark humor. Billed as “The ultimate experience in grueling terror,” Evil Dead proved to be not just a scare-fest, but a master class in horror filmmaking that would influence generations of creators to come.
Evil Dead is at its best not when it’s showing gore, but when it plays with our fears. Going to a cabin in a rural, unfamiliar area can be scary enough without awakening an evil entity bent on swallowing the souls of those who have disturbed its slumber. How do you fight an entity and stop it from taking yours? This fear of the unknown is only amplified when your friends become your direct threat.
The film also doesn’t jump into the scary gratuitous gore. There is some build up and great fake outs. They are as subtle as the porch swing moving on its own when the kids pull up to the cabin and as sudden as the cellar door flying open in the middle of dinner. The cabin doesn’t look so big, but when the terror starts, we learn that size matters.
While character Scott attempts to downplay the strange occurrences, the filmmakers’ storytelling methods tell us otherwise. It’s here the band-aid slowly starts to come off. We get a first-person view of the creepy cellar. Ash follows Scott down and they find a book, a dagger, and a tape recorder. Cutting back and forth between first- and third-person perspectives puts us in the middle of the experience. Plus, Joe La Duca’s score is just the right balance of calm and tense needed.
When Ash and Scott emerge, they have a tape recorder, dagger, and the book of the dead in their hand. They play the tape recorder and the voice tells them what they have found. At the end, though, the voice starts reciting an incantation that awakens something in the woods. This entity starts following our college kids and watches them get ready for bed. Now, the first-person shot from the entity’s point of view is to not only transition the scenes, but to unsettle us.
This is something that becomes a motif in the franchise: this camera shot chasing Ash and the other characters in this way; not being able to see what is chasing our characters and seeing how close they are from being the victim; the unnerving sound emanating from the demon sounds garbled, but determined to claim a soul. The waxing and waning of Joe LaDuca’s score creates a certain atmosphere, but there are also these moments of absolute silence that build more tension than LaDuca’s score can in some instances.
The film’s use of body horror and possession delves into this fear of losing control of yourself. After the evil entity has entered Cheryl, everything changes. This is not a weekend getaway, this is survival. While picking off victims one by one is a slasher trope going back to Agatha Christie’s …And Then There Were None, it’s only enhanced under these supernatural circumstances and this much gore. Cheryl is neutralized and put into the cellar after attacking Linda with a pencil. Soon Shelly, Scott’s girlfriend, is turned into a Deadite. She has a reaction to holding the knife now being used by Scott to defend himself. When its handle starts to burn and meld to her hand, what was once Shelly actually bites through her wrist. When Scott stabs her with it, she lets out this guttural scream while foaming at the mouth before grabbing an ax from Ash and chopping her to pieces.
The use of practical effects and makeup is a given due to the movie being low budget. It’s part of the charm of this movie, but also the reason its scares are so effective. Their blank eyes and grayed, rotting faces combined with gallons of corn syrup for blood give them a grotesque look, but it’s the psychological havoc they cause Ash that makes them out of control.
After the effects of Linda’s wound turns her into one of these things, her husk of a body cackles at Ash until it attacks him. Cheryl joins in from the cellar and slams on the door in the floor. Ash stabs her with the knife and she seemingly dies. Ash is reminded to dispose of her by dismembering her from the now-deceased Scott. Ash doesn’t have it in him to do it and buries her whole, but we know the tricks these monsters pull. Linda attacks Ash, and he is forced to decapitate her. Linda’s head goes in one direction but the body lands on Ash and tries to rekindle their love in a way that only a decapitated demon knows how: dry humping.
This over-the-top gore is unrelenting through the movie, but none so more than in the third act. We have reached full terror as the reanimated Scott and Cheryl chase after Ash, but Ash figured out the source of this terror. He throws the Book of the Dead into the fire and it melts. Stop-motion animation is used to show the possessed Scott and Cheryl’s rotting flesh melting off their bones, similar to the book burning. Ash has survived the night, subverting the final girl trope, but one last POV shot shows that he may not last for very much long.
As most of us know, Evil Dead has gone on to become an extremely popular franchise with its sequels, video games, comic books, TV show, and reboots. Its star, Bruce Campbell, became a pillar in the horror community and a fixture at cons and in other movies, but mostly sticking with horror. The movie helped popularize the cabin in the woods trope, but was parodied in Drew Goddard’s horror satire aptly named Cabin in the Woods. Evil Dead gained fans not only through its scares, but also the story of how some kids from Michigan raised funds to make a very unconventional horror movie on their own terms.
This seemingly scrappy movie came out of nowhere and helped change not only horror, but indie film. The low-budget production created an authenticity that horror sometimes lacks. Evil Dead‘s ability to tap into the primal fears of isolation and possession is why it remains the most terrifying movie experience you will ever have.
