The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1981)

You see horror and satire, plain ridicule, are not far from each other. When I first saw Evil Dead I was ten years old. And it scared the shit out of me. I couldn't sleep afterwards I was seeing demons in my room. And then I watched it again when I was 38. And I couldn't stop laughing. Everything in that movie seemed completely ridiculous. The special effects, the demons' faces, the male protagonist. And maybe that's the thing that makes the biggest impression in Evil Dead. The fact that it is an ultra scary supernatural horror movie that it looks like the Marx brothers. Horror and humour make a powerful collaboration and the thing that it comes out is something, a type of hybrid that makes you balance in a very mysterious and entertaining way between those two. In the same way that there is no drama without comedy, there isn't any horror without humour. We tend to forget that the essence of horror is a very humoristic thing. The fact that you are going to watch a movie that will make you feel scared and uncomfortable is something that it carries tons of humour. There is something totally masochistic in watching a horror movie. In reality who wants to be scared? Nobody. Scare is a fucking awful emotion. It makes you sweat, it makes you bite your nails, it makes you behave like a... scared person. But we all indulge into horror movies. We all want to feel that spicy scare. And that is quite funny. The look of the person who is scared is quite funny. And the demons in that way in this movie are quite funny. They are trying hard to be scary, they are trying hard to be nightmarish but they fail, miraculously. They are puppets. They are nothing but this week's big joke.

And there is no doubt that all this is made deliberately in that movie. Evil Dead moves from horrific to ridiculous constantly. The moment that you are scared to your soul a close-up of the demon laughing will make you laugh and forget your horror. And that is what makes Evil Dead a pure fun movie. A movie that is not asking to be taken seriously, a movie that is not here to win trophies, but to make you understand that the thing that doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. Evil Dead is what amusement parks are offering. A cheap scare and tons of fun and laugh. So enjoy that. Enjoy the thrill of laughing with your own self who is about to piss his pants from scare.