Review of Army of Darkness (1992) by John O — 17 Aug 2015

After how suspenseful and spooky the first two movies were, this movie is kind of a step down in quality. It's definitely going for a very different tone, but it doesn't always feel like Raimi knows what kind of movie he wants to make. He tries to retain the creepy aesthetic of Evil Dead through the make-up design and camerawork, but he's more interested in comedy and all out campy action this time around. Sometimes it works well, as this is easily the funniest and most quotable movie in the series. However, it will occasionally shift into flat out Looney Tunes/Tex Avery shenanigans with such a jarring thrust that it gets hard to care if Ash wins or not. We cared about Ash in the first two because we could feel the torment that anguished him in between the crazy scenarios. This Ash is such an action hero archetype that he always has a joke even in the saddest of moments, which makes for funny dialogue but not a lot of sympathy. And while the Evil Dead films have been largely focused on him, it's hard to ignore how incidental everything else in the story is. There's no investment in his romance arc that feels crow barred in to not have it be all guys in the film, none of the other characters have any presence and the comedic antics of the enemy range from suitably malevolent to Star Wars droids levels of out of place.Also, this was clearly before Raimi figured out how to direct action that isn't horror rooted, as the antics of the extras in particular are so unconvincing that it pulls out right out of certain scenes.

That said, the spirited direction Raimi provides, along with stellar production value overall, is handled as well as you would want from a movie in this series. Sometimes you don't mind how fake the skeletons look because it's all in line with the film's visual tone and the camerawork does a lot to make them feel involved in a scene. Also, Bruce Campbell has never been better than he was in this movie either, even if Ash has inexplicably become an outrageous prick between this film and the last. He exudes the charisma and swagger that Raimi matches visually to make us care about the story even when there's not a whole lot of tension to be had.

I know I may come off more negative than my score reflects, but it really is not as strong a film as the others were. Even those had their limitations, but they feel a lot more focused and tense with what they had to work with. This film wants to be something totally different but still retain the Evil Dead brand, all the while channeling a "kid with a film camera" sense of storytelling. What you get is a stew of a movie, with lot of good parts mixed in stuff that just doesn't work very well. Still, if you can just stick with it, it has plenty of moments to make up for how scatterbrained it comes off as.