Lamar Houston: The Evil Dead
Film Research
Vision Board Inspiration
Essay
Evil Dead (1981) is a B list horror-comedy movie that follows the events of a group of four friends who are vacationing at a cabin in the Tennessee woods for the weekend. While there, they find an evil book in the cabin which turns out to be the Necronomicon–the ancient book of the dead. Along with the book, there is a recording from the previous owner of the cabin in which he details all of his findings of the Necronomicon which includes a chant from the book that unknowingly unleashes evil spirits on the campsite. From here, the teenagers are now at the mercy of ancient spirits that are hell-bent on wreaking utter havoc on the teens. The spirits do so until the last of the teens–Ash figures out how to kill them and does so. The end of the movie would have you believe that he is victorious over the spirits until the last scene where it’s morning and he is overtaken by the very spirits that he spent the entire movie fighting.
The film conceptually centers on horror but it is debated and classified by reviewers as a horror comedy. The horror aspect is achieved by the terror and psychological trauma the characters go through as they are being toyed with by spirits before ultimately meeting a gruesome demise. With that said, however, the gruesome aspect of this movie is so detailed that it comes off as over the top and slapstick at times since the movie was produced on such a low budget. The film was overly ambitious in its scope and while it was conceptually inventive, it was really held back by the monetary limitations of the film in its execution. These limitations did not hinder the popularity of the film over time as those very flaws became strong points for the film over the years and it owes a lot to the over the top nature of its visuals and to a lesser extent, plot.
As i was saying the over the top nature of this film is what has largely carried it over the years. It showed that a b-list film–and all the limitations that come with that–has great potential to become a classic as well as becoming something stylistically unique. It takes themes of ancient evil spirits and modernized it as much as possible (for the time) with the setting and narrative of a bunch of teens going on spring break in a 1970s cabin in the woods.
Words to Idea + Thesis Statement
Movie: The Evil Dead
5 words: Evil, Horror, Demonic, Gorefest, Hysterical
Thesis Statement: This film is about a group of young adults in the 1970s that accidentally unleash an ancient, murderous and twisted evil in which they have little to no way of overcoming during spring break.
Visual Research (Inspiration Board/Collection)
The group is arriving at the cabin in the Tenessee woods.
When they arrive, one of the teens named Ash is inspecting the cabin and finds the Necronomicon in the basement along with a recording left by the previous inhabitant
The group plays the recording which unbeknownst to them has contains an ancient incantation from the book of the dead that summons malevolent spirits
Sometime later, they retire to their rooms where one of the group, Cheryl, hears noises in the woods and goes to investigate alone. In doing so, the spirits possess a tree which violates her and passes on the possession to her which doesn't show immediately after the initial incident.
After she gets back to the cabin and tells the group of what happened, they tell her to brush it off as they dont initially believe her story. As the night goes on however, the possession is slowly revealed as it starts to take over her body and mind.
After a while Sheryl is now completely possessed and it is revealed to the group by way of her accurately predicting all the cards in correct order of a deck of cards. The group begins to question Sheryl as she then turns around to reveal a pale white zombified face. As they try to come to grips with the situation, Sheryl attacks another of the girls in the group by stabbing her in the ankle with a pencil.
This prompts the group to attack Sheryl back and in doing so they detain her in the cellar where she remains for majority of the movie. Albeit taunting the group the entire way through as she can still peep through the cellar door.
As the night goes on, Nancy is possessed by a spirit as well but Scotty kills that spirit by bashing its head in with an ax. Scotty then goes out into the forest in order to find help while Ash stays behind with his girlfriend Linda who said she wasn't feeling any type of good earlier and is laying down. Scotty returns near death and Ash goes back to check on Linda right before she jumps up and attacks him as she is now possessed as well.
Ash survives the altercation and in order to kill what Linda has become, he has to decapitate her. He cant bring himself to do so however and buries her in the yard. This proves to be almost fatal as the corpse just springs back to life and almost kills him until he lobs her head off with a shovel, finally killing it.
Ash rushes back to the cabin to find that Sheryl has escaped the cellar. He finds a shotgun and seemingly kills Sheryl before retreating back to the cellar to get more shells for his shotgun. Here he is mentally tormented by the evil in the cabin before he leaves the cellar.
Upon leaving the cellar he is attacked by Sheryl again as he didnt successfully kill her before.
Not only is Sheryl still reanimated but so is Scotty and he is assaulted by both demons.
He cant take both of them on at the same time with just a shotgun so he deduces that the only way to kill them and the spirits is to burn the Necronomicon so he throws it into the fire and they both turn to slime and die just as day breaks.
As day breaks, Ash leaves the cabin to assumed safety and to try to find his way out of the woods and back to civilization only to be pursued by another spirit. The last scene of the movie is Ash standing in the clearing in front of the cabin while a spirit makes its way through the back door of the house and to the front in order to possess Ash which he turns around and recognizes right as it happens and the screen fades to the credits on his horrified face.
Exploration/Formulation (Style Board/Examples/Studies)
My exploration lead me to challenge myself through abstraction. This image is an abstraction of trees in a forest. My goal is to have the camera pan through these trees to simulate stumbling around a forest while the trees disappear and reappear in differing sizes.
While the camera is panning through the trees, this filter would flash or something and the scene would get more visceral
As the filter shows on screen, it would reveal the title. I also wanted to experiment with color of the filter as well.
I want the trees to turn into film after every/every other flash of the filter and to possibly picture something in the cells. Im not sure yet.
idea sketches
idea sketches
Story Board
This is the storyboard. I'm exploring this movie through abstract minimalist concepts. The scratchy screen that you are seeing is going to flicker while the camera is panning throughout the composition
