Raimi's movie is a glorious goof, which picks up some of Lovecraft's tossed off ideas as an excuse for gross-out physical comedy and joyful filmmaking.

| Apr 3, 2024

Its demons just want to have a little nasty fun with its human playthings and the gleeful excess is so over-the-top that it leaves the realm of horror and becomes slapstick splatter fest

| Jul 1, 2023

Raimi delivers. At this point, I'm not sure whether he's a genius or certifiable (perhaps a bit of both), but Evil Dead 2 is the horror equivalent of the hardest drugs there are: it bypasses logic and heads straight for your pleasure centers.

| Mar 29, 2023

It revels in bad taste. It boasts smart-alecky special effects. The blood doesn't flow, it gushes. Sitting through this movie is an ordeal. All of which means Evil Dead 2 is a spectacular success. There are horror movies, and then there is this thing.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 29, 2023

For those who respond by screaming back at the movie while swallowing its junk food aesthetic, this may be the best time they've had in quite a while.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Mar 29, 2023

Keep your eye on Raimi: it's not easy to pitch a comedy at a level this flamboyant and then keep topping the gags.

| Mar 29, 2023

Raimi's style is very reminiscent of his previous collaborations with Joel and Ethan Coen... But while the Coens have found substance to fit their style in Raising Arizona, Raimi is still making glorified splatter movies, however fitfully amusing.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 29, 2023

I think I could lose my job over this one, but Evil Dead 2 is terrific... It takes the form of the slasher movie and subverts it, suffusing it with comic gusto, bravura filmmaking skills and more sheer originality than any film since Re-Animator.

| Mar 29, 2023

No movie this year has made me laugh half as much as Sam Raimi's whirligig sequel to his cult classic, The Evil Dead.

| Mar 29, 2023

Taken at face value, it's a so-so horror thriller oozing gore. But add a star if you can approach this sequel to The Evil Dead as a decidedly campy follow-up to the original.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 29, 2023

The funniest, yuckiest, fastest-paced horror flick since -- well, since the original Evil Dead emerged in 1983.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 29, 2023

Raimi combines animation, models and process photography with dazzling camera angles and sharp cutting to create a marvelous collection of tricks. I hope someone gives him a chance to make a better movie some day.

| Mar 29, 2023

Bruce Campbell, more gifted an actor than his infrequent screen assignments indicate, here turns visceral shock to slapstick ballet -- achieving revulsion through delicacy of motion.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 29, 2023

Newcomer Campbell is perfectly cast as the exasperated hero... He is wonderfully adept at physical comedy delivered in a deadpan style.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 29, 2023

Even the most rabid horror-phile should recognize that director Sam Raimi is kidding with this one. On a so-bad-it's-good level it's a lot of fun.

| Mar 29, 2023

In [the first] Evil Dead, Raimi's fast-forward style and Looney Tunes sensibility were the amusing juvenilia of a snappy new talent... To make one film like that may be regarded as an indulgence; to make two looks like a serious lack of real ideas.

| Mar 29, 2023

Raimi has provided a slam-bang roller coaster of a gorefest that is a superior example of the most indestructible of genres, the independent horror movie.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 29, 2023

Blood flows like water at a fire brigade open-day and for those who relish such ungentlemanly affairs, this film offers 85-minutes of undiluted pleasure.

| Mar 29, 2023

Now granted, this stuff isn't for everyone. But for those who keep an eye out for masterpieces of dismemberment, Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn is a tongue-in-cheek classic.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 29, 2023

Evil Dead 2 is neither scary nor funny. It is about as enjoyable as a kick in the lower abdomen.

| Mar 29, 2023