|Benjamin Jarman|
The Evil Dead plays at the Trylon Cinema from Friday, October 25th, through Sunday, October 27th. Visit trylon.org for tickets and more information.
My mom doesn’t like horror movies much, but she is open-minded enough to sit down and watch Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead with her son. I wasn’t expecting her to become the newest fan of the franchise, but I was interested in what could keep someone from thinking positively about the horror genre. One of the clearest memories I have of my mom’s disposition towards the genre happened in 1991 when she was visibly distraught when picking me up from a screening of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare; I didn’t tell her I went, but she found out. At another time, to teach some sort of lesson, she dared my sister and I to watch the edited for television version of The Exorcist (we made it to the first appearance of the Pazuzu statue). This history reminds me of the negative criticism received by many horror films (including The Evil Dead) due to the high levels of violence. But are horror movies automatically “terrible” just because of the violence? Fans of horror would obviously say no, but what about the opinion of someone that doesn’t see things so black and white? That is where my mom comes in. The 74-year-old places Cinema Paradiso at the top of her list of all-time favorite movies and had a bowl of buttered popcorn prepared that was only a quarter finished by the end of our viewing of The Evil Dead.
Would you watch The Evil Dead more than once?
No. I did go into it with a real open mind and I do understand it’s a cult thing. I didn’t dislike it; I found it interesting. There were a lot of little pieces that I like. I liked the details in some of the rooms. I like some of the shots. There were parts of the music that really contributed to it. However, there are things, like in most horror movies, that just don’t work. It’s gross, but it doesn’t make me feel sick. It just tends to make me lose interest. The overtness never scares me. In fact, it kind of kills my attention because there were times I felt a good buildup of tension, but it’s too over the top. It just deadens the mood.
Were you scared at all during the movie?
Maybe just a brief jump, but even when Ash went down to the basement, I thought, I know the other guy is going to jump out at him. There are times that tension was building for me, but then it just didn’t.
On that note, since it didn’t seem to scare you too much, did it have the opposite effect in the sense that it was funny or did it just make the film slower?
For me, the movie really went fast, but I don’t think I ever quite got a huge buildup of tension which then leads to fear. Nor was there enough humor to carry it through.
What is evil? If you have an example that would be great.
I think maybe because I am more realistic, evil to me is more of the stuff you see in the world, in ordinary life. I think of Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. There’s no moral. These are people or things that are only thinking of themselves; they do not have any humanity in them. They have no soul. Things that they do are pure, true evil. In The Evil Dead, there was that nebulous camera thing and I kept thinking maybe it’s a metaphor for something but no, it was just this nebulous entity. I find something that’s real and concrete can be evil.
How do you become a person like that? Where does that come from? To tie it into the movie, is the answer possession by otherworldly spirits and that’s how you become evil?
I think for most people, things have happened in their lives that end up creating this evil. Sometimes it is something horrible and evil has been done to them. Sometimes it could be greed. It could be something within a person that just overpowers them and that’s the driving force in them. That’s scary to me.
Is there anything you can laugh about in terms of death?
I think it can be ironic, but I feel guilty though when I laugh about death. I was so surprised with the show Dexter because I know he was always going after bad people, but he’s still a gross murderer. Eventually you get to know the character though and you see their humanity and their soul and their heart.
Did you have any sympathy for Ashley Williams in The Evil Dead?
No. I was sitting there thinking practically, how was he going to explain himself out of this at the end? Then the nebulous entity came and that was it for Ashley. I wonder if it’s because they weren’t good actors or characters to me.
Do you believe in the supernatural?
I don’t think I do. I mean, I’ve had supernatural experiences, but I think it’s all in your head. You have discussions about that as you’re growing up, but that’s not enough. I’m too based in reality. I have enough time coping with reality without adding another thing to worry about.
Do you remember Satanic panic in the 1980s?
Oh yeah, that was all kinds of cultish kinds of things going on. It didn’t affect me though. It’s stupid. I worry about people that can fall prey to it like those girls in Wisconsin that believed in the one creature.
Oh yeah, Slender Man.
Yeah. I get the maddest at whoever created that on the Internet. That’s what is evil. These poor adolescent girls got it into their heads and you know how it messes with people’s heads, particularly with kids and how it just disrupts.
What you said about Slender Man is interesting; people are obsessed with it. Can you see something like The Evil Dead being taken the same way by the public and influencing little girls from Wisconsin to kill people?
I don’t see it with this movie. The intention is not for that. It’s a movie. The director never intended for that to happen, right? It wouldn’t be the fault of the film. People are saying these violent movies influence kids. That’s not the intent, but some of the stuff that’s on the internet is intended to disrupt and mess with people’s heads.
What’s your general opinion of horror in pop culture?
It’s a genre that I just have never really gotten into. I love Alfred Hitchcock and there’s something about The Shining that I really, really have always liked, but for the most part I have no interest. I really liked The Exorcist except when the head spinning came. You know, once it gets gross and weird, it loses my interest. A really good scary movie doesn’t need any of that.
Why would anybody make The Evil Dead? What’s the point?
I kept thinking about that when I was watching it. It’s a good genre to use for people to experiment with; you can really play with the shots and telling a story. I know it’s a popular genre with young film makers. It makes sense to me.
Do you see Bruce Campbell as a leading man? I always think of Bruce Campbell as a low budget Cary Grant. Do you see that at all?
Uh, no, I don’t. No, no, no. He was clearly the best of all the actors. I did like that scene of the girl running through the forest and the branches. That was good. Overall though, the acting was way over the top.
For many, the forest rape scene goes too far. You mentioned that you liked that scene, at least the part where she’s running through the forest. Why would a filmmaker decide to do this scene?
I started thinking it was a metaphor and things kept happening to the women. I thought maybe there is something about the evil out there and how it is tied to the women. I could buy it for a while and I think that part was a little scarier. It’s just when they start to turn into those ghouls I lose it. I thought female vengeance would be involved though. I was probably trying to search for something more in the movie than what was there. Is this symbolic of the tying down of women and the rape of women? That one guy, not Ash, was kind of a creep too, but then none of that panned out. That was all in my head.
That’s super fascinating. That’s usually the hardest part for me to watch of any of The Evil Dead movies. Without knowing anything about the production of this movie, do you believe the film makers were interested in just pleasing audiences or making money?
I don’t know. I think they were into making the movie and then knowing that they have an audience of young people that would watch. But no matter how young you are and who you are, you’re also going to hope you make some money.
Stephen King championed this movie early on. Do you listen when Stephen King gives a stamp of approval?
I do. I have evolved in my appreciation of Stephen King. I could not get into his horror, but then friends told me to try some of his non-horror books. After reading of few of these books, I could see that he is a good writer. He is interviewed a lot and he also wrote essays and I really agreed with the things he said. So, you can’t close yourself off completely or you miss out.
What’s an appropriate age to see this movie?
As a mom, from my point of view, I never wanted you watch this movie just like I didn’t want you to watch Married with Children. But I know young people like to watch what their parents don’t want them to see. On the same note, I have friends my own age that have told me that I have weird taste. I recommended Pulp Fiction to them, they hated it, and now they don’t trust my opinion. So it’s not the gore that bugs me in this sense, it is more about the quality of the movie and the story and acting and meaning. If you don’t have that, I don’t want to recommend something, let alone allow my child to watch.
On that note, why would anyone be a fan of this movie? Why does this movie have sequels, a TV show, and tons of video games?
I can see people really liking this, but you’d have to answer that yourself.
It’s funny and over the top like a cartoon and also intense and scary. The concept of horror and comedy combining is really entertaining to me.
Yeah, I can see that.
At the beginning of this interview, we talked about evil and what it is. Is this film, as an artifact, “evil” for what it is portraying?
I just think it’s fun. I mean not for me, but I think that people enjoy the fun of it and being scared. I don’t think it’s evil. I don’t even think that was the point of making it. I can’t see anyone getting a nightmare over it or anything. Again, I keep going back to the more real something is, then it’s scary and that’s when the nightmares come. When you have over the top, graphic monsters and eyeballs and guts and blood and hacking people up with the axes and poker sticks, that’s not terror. I mean, that’s not terrifying. I’m glad I watched it. I thought it was going to be scarier and I’d have to turn away or I couldn’t watch, but it just didn’t.
Edited by Matthew Tchepikova-Treon