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Monday, March 18, 2013

Is Evil Dead a zombie movie?

This is a question for everyone who are also fans of the Sam Raimi classic series. The Evil Dead, culminating with Army Of Darkness, is probably my favorite horror series of all time. I never really thought of it as a zombie series, though. So, I ask of you, do you think it's a zombie film series? For me, it was never approached as that. It was a story filled with either a lot of random gore (Evil Dead) or a lot of slapstick Three Stooges humor (Evil Dead 2/Army of Darkness). Technically, the dead do rise from the grave, but my thought was everything was magical and demons were the reason behind it. I never thought zombie, but maybe it is zombie. What do you think? Also, is the remake going to be more zombie than the original? Or, has it always been zombie? I truly wonder.
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5 comments:

  1. oseznoMarch 18, 2013 at 2:29 PM

    I don't consider the creatures in The Evil Dead franchise zombies. They are deadites (though I don't think they were called this until Army of Darkness; it's been a while). These creatures are people who have been possessed by demons - not corpses. Technicalities, maybe?

    As for the remake... no Bruce Campbell = no care.

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    1. UnknownSeptember 9, 2018 at 7:19 AM

      Actually Deadites were mentioned at the end of Evil Dead 2. When Ash falls from the sky into medieval times. One of the knights says something about a hero falling from the sky to save them from the twrrors of the Deadites.

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  2. UnknownMarch 20, 2013 at 8:58 AM

    I, too, am a huge fan of the Evil Dead franchise. That being said, I have also wondered whether or not something like the Evil Dead trilogy can be considered a zombie text. Certainly I think we can say all three films have 'zombic' elements to them -- the living dead, most obviously, as well as the kind of humans vs. undead antagonism we see taken to war-like proportions in Army of Darkness. But based on some of the zombie legends we've studied this semester, it seems we might be able to identify a few other zombie strands running through the Evil Dead. The first that comes to mind is original voodoo zombie. In the Necronomicon I think we can locate a bit of the spiritual/religious aspect of the Haitian voodoo zombie tradition in Evil Dead. Though the words that raise the dead and the maleficent spirits of the forest are spoken with little or no awareness to what will actually happen once they've been uttered, the whole possession set up still reminds me of the "Delice" sort of set up -- invoking the loa to enter the body of a corpse. On the other hand, it is definitely not a clear cut case of the voodoo zombie for a number of reasons. The first thing that comes to mind is that, in Evil Dead, you don't necessarily have to be dead to become possessed. If that's the case, then the zombie-possession formula we're working with seems more along the lines of something like White Zombie, in which the voodoo master can control the minds of either living or dead to carry out their will. But in Evil Dead, there is a split between the evil forces of the forest that possess the dead (and the living) and the individuals that call the forces into that particular space and time. Not so much an answer as a reflection on your question, but as a horror film fanatic and big time ED enthusiast, an interesting topic. I might add to this "Is-this-a-zombie-movie" conversation the question as to whether or not we consider Reanimator a zombie film. Similar to Evil Dead, I think it walks the line -- perhaps a bit more closely than the ED franchise -- but something about it always makes me hesitate to flat out proclaim it a zombie film. Maybe its the kind of case-by-case basis of the reanimated in the film? Or the fact that Hill (guy who gets reanimated following decapitation with a shovel) not only has agency over his disconnected body, commanding it to carry out a number of tasks, but also has a very active sex drive (making for one of the cheesiest, grossest, downright hilarious what-the-hell-is-going-on kind of moments in horror movie history). Anyway, food for thought.

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  3. stigmaAugust 6, 2018 at 6:14 PM

    They are Deadites. Dead and (sometimes) living humans possessed by Kandaarian demons. A different species entirely. Zombies are mindless drones, driven by one single thing; cannibalism. Deadites are intelligent, with a need to cause havoc and mess with your head. They're actually more similar to Regan in The Exorcist.

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  4. stigmaFebruary 7, 2019 at 6:42 PM

    Would you consider the entities in Pet Sematary deadites as well? They're certainly not zombies either.
    They're returned from the grave, possessed by the Wendigo, to wreak havoc among the living..
    Stephen King was a huge fan of Evil Dead, and he published Pet Sematary one year after Evil Dead was released.

    That's hardly a coincidence..

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