Army of Darkness (1993) review

(6/10)

This second sequel to the Evil Dead series was much goofier and lazily done in my opinion. It only keeps about half of the scary-funny spirit that the previous two had, but keeps its random mood where anything can happen. 'Army' is still a campy treat.

PLOT:Ash (Bruce Campbell), top employee of S-mart, and his car are sent back in time to the middle ages due to the evil powers of the Necronomicon, or Book of the Dead. The locals think he's of the rival castle until he proves himself worthy with chainsaw and boomstick in hand. To get back to his time, they tell Ash he must go and find the the Necronomicon itself, say the magic words, and bring it back to the castle. Things go wrong when Ash forgets the magic words and brings the book back, waking up a whole army of the dead. Now, Ash must help these people defend their land or leave them suffering. It's a good plot executed decently.



ACTING:The acting in here is pretty standard for the series. Bruce Campbell plays his usual stoically comedic role as Ash. Embeth Davidtz also plays a decent part as Sheila, Ash's female interest in this film. Everybody else is pretty good. Nobody really stands out, except for maybe the Deadites, Richard Grove as Duke Henry, and Bill Moseley as the Deadite leader.

SCORE:The score in this film doesn't matter too much, but it's creepy with enough action in it to get the job done.

EFFECTS:The effects in here were very lazily done as compared to the previous two movies. The props were more obvious, but the make-up and digital effects were good enough to get the job done. A few of the effects I really liked, but most of them were a fall from the first two overall.

CAMERAWORK:I don't know if it was intentional or of it was just because of sloppy work, but the camerawork in here was really awful at certain parts. The camera shook during more than one of the most action-packed parts in the film. If it wasn't meant to be there for camp effect, then it would just be awful. However, I don't know Raimi's intentions with that move.



OTHER CONTENT:This addition to the Evil Dead series was definitely a fall from the previous two. This sequel focuses more on laughs and goofy scares than accomplishing both to the fullest as in the previous two. There's maybe a couple of light scares and then it's laden with goofy, campy laughs. Most of them are really funny, but some just don't seem to entertain me but instead make me wonder where Raimi was going with this addition. For the most part, I enjoyed the random, campy laughs, but it just got to be too much in the end with less spirit than the previous additions. This could stand alone as a campfest of a film, but either way, I'd have similar feelings about it.

OVERALL,an okay comedy horror with a good plot, standard acting, mood-fitting score, mostly lazy effects, shaky camerawork, a bigger focus on campy laughs, and less spirit than the other Evil Dead films.