The Evil Dead

i think my favorite thing about genre films, especially horror, is that they have their own cinematic dialects. these dialects are often much simpler than prestige drama films or even hollywood blockbusters. in the case of the evil dead all you need to know is that a group of friends is going to a remote cabin in the woods and that there was a demonolgist who was researching paranormal activity in that cabin to know that some fucked up shit is gonna go down. and that’s exactly what happens. the characters and the backstory take a backseat to the spectacle. demons possess the characters one by one and cause them to deteriorate to the point of unrecognizability. they’re no longer people, they’re hunks of flesh barely held together by bones muscles and ligaments. it’s terrifying to come to terms with the fragility of our bodies. that the vessels which are responsible for our existence are a few ax blows from being annihilated.  the evil dead has no intellectual purpose. the plot is cliché to the point of nonsense and serves only to set up gory set pieces. but the gore evokes such a visceral reaction that you can’t really think of much else. in her book, “the body in pain”, elaine scarry argues that intense pain “destroys a person’s self and the world.” when the characters are impaled and dismembered, they lose sense of their reality. all that exists for them is an all-consuming pain that makes them lose sense of reality. this is underscored by the fact that the characters become literally possessed. as scarry puts it “the person in pain experiences his own body as the agent of his agony.” the possessed are being betrayed by their own bodies. as spectators to this carnival of agony we experience a visceral repulsion but we can never truly intellectualize the experience of the tortured. but the film allows us to inhabit that space where all one can think of is pain and the desperation to stop it at all costs.