Ash Williams heads to a remote cabin in the woods with his girlfriend Linda, where he discovers a recording left behind by Professor Raymond Knowby. The professor had been researching the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, an ancient text containing passages capable of awakening something considerably worse than academic curiosity.
When the recording plays an incantation from the book, the evil lurking in the woods returns. Linda becomes possessed, Ash finds himself trapped inside the cabin, and reality rapidly starts behaving as though it has developed a personal grudge against him.
Bruce Campbell returns as Ash, but Evil Dead II begins transforming him into the character who would become a horror icon. His increasingly desperate battle against the Deadites involves possession, dismemberment, a rebellious severed hand, a chainsaw, and the arrival of several unfortunate people who have no idea what they’re walking into.
Director Sam Raimi takes the supernatural horror of The Evil Dead and pushes it toward horror comedy, filling the film with exaggerated gore, physical comedy, inventive camerawork, and increasingly surreal situations. The result is violent, ridiculous, creepy, and frequently hilarious.
Evil Dead II also expands the mythology surrounding the Necronomicon and the forces it can unleash, setting up ideas that would continue through Army of Darkness and eventually Ash vs Evil Dead.
Why Evil Dead II Belongs on Love of Gothic
Evil Dead II takes the occult foundations of the original film and turns them into something stranger, bloodier, and much funnier. The Necronomicon, demonic possession, resurrection, ancient evil, and a remote cabin surrounded by hostile woods give the story plenty of traditional supernatural horror.
Its importance to horror culture makes the connection even stronger. Ash’s chainsaw, the Deadites, the Book of the Dead, and the film’s gleefully excessive practical effects have become enduring horror icons.
The comedy may be absurd, but the world underneath it is filled with cursed books, demons, mutilated bodies, portals, and things that refuse to stay dead. That’s more than enough to earn Evil Dead II a place on Love of Gothic.