Army of Darkness

Starring: Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert, Ian Abercrombie, Richard Grove, Bridget Fonda, Ted Raimi
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy, Horror
1992

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Ash (Bruce Campbell) finds himself in the 1300s where he must join forces with knights to battle the evil plaguing the land and retrieve the Necromicon so he can return to his own time.

Review:

Tim: I have to admit now, I'm not the biggest fan of the Evil Dead movies. I'm a little surprised so many people are/were. I get what Sam Raimi intended to do, but it's hard to feel like he accomplished much with these films. The original was good, as he made one of the most gross-out, horrifying movies of all time. The sequel was derivative and basically a rehash of the original. Army of Darkness is definitely a departure, but it feels like it lost the essence of the first two movies. This one embraces the comedy much more than the horror and I'm not convinced it works. This is one of the more bizarre trilogies I've ever seen. Each entry has its issues and it feels discordant with the others. The trilogy feels like someone who is making things up as he goes along, instead of having any real vision.

From a conceptual perspective, I was all about this movie. It's crazy to dump Ash in 1300 A.D. and make him fight an army of evil to get the Book of the Dead so he can return to his own time. That's a bonkers idea and I love that Raimi went with it. It definitely gives this third film a unique flavor. It's also entertaining to see a movie set in the Medieval times, but also has a modern man in it. It's a fun, unexpected amalgamation of ideas and it's certainly not something we've seen before.

I do think that Raimi lost his way with this movie, though. He seems overly focused on the comedy elements. Sometimes this works (I still laugh at the line where Bruce Campbell tells the crowd to get out of his face). But, often it falls flat. The Three Stooges routine didn't quite work. Some of the humor is okay, but I rarely laughed throughout this movie. So, we get additional moderately funny to moderately unfunny humor, but we lose a bit too. This movie dialed way back on the gruesomeness. I didn't think I would miss that, but it makes the whole film feel kind of boring. You had to pay attention to the first two movies because they were so gross and horrifying. This movie doesn't have that- my mind wandered throughout the film and every time it came back, it felt like I didn't miss much. You would think that a movie about a modern guy fighting an army of evil almost 700 years into the past would be more engaging. There's good moments- much of the graveyard scene is good. The climactic battle certainly has fun moments, even if it ultimately goes on too long. These scenes are too uneven.

Bruce Campbell is fun to watch as Ash. He embraces everything so gleefully, it's hard not to get drawn into his character. He's not an especially good actor, though. That is a real limitation. It's almost funny, how unaware of this fact he seems to be. That actually helps his performance. I liked Campbell here, even when I couldn't always appreciate his acting technique. It was nice to see Embeth Davidtz here. She's good in a supporting role. I was really happy to see Bridget Fonda, then disappointed when she never showed up again. I always like when I see Ted Raimi, even if it's for a moment.

I know this movie is supposed to be the definition of "camp". I don't fault the movie for any of that. Raimi wanted to tell a crazy story and have fun and some laughs doing it. That doesn't hurt the movie at all. It's more about how he executes this. Of the three movies, this felt the least compelling to me. It's the biggest departure from the others, which is good, but it feels like it lost some of the essence about what made this franchise unique.

I should note that I watched the Director's Cut. There's a bunch of versions of this film. I know there are alternative endings. The one I watched (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT, NOT THAT ANYONE IS EVER GOING TO READ THIS BESIDES ME) is where he returns home to the post-apocalyptic world. I read about the other endings and I'm not sure they would have changed anything for me.

Army of Darkness is okay, but it's my least favorite film of the trilogy. I get that some people love the campiness and the craziness of these films. However, I'm not the biggest fan. That being said, horror trilogies in the 1980s and 1990s were almost universally bad. It's something that Sam Raimi created a trilogy with no bad movies. They may not all be good, but relatively, you can't fault him too much for the trilogy.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II