Return of the Evil Dead (A.K.A. Attack of the Blind Dead)

When I first reviewed Tombs of the Blind Dead, the consensus was that the sequels dropped significantly in quality, and I braced myself for a shoddy follow-up. Unfortunately, Return of the Evil Dead proves to be a particularly frustrating second outing. It feels less like an attempt to deliver a bigger and better experience and more like a minimal effort cash grab leveraging the slight hit status of its low-budget predecessor. Established audience, lower budget, higher profit.

It’s clear writer/director Amando de Ossorio simply took the atmospheric elements that made the first movie successful and tried to reuse them without putting in the necessary work. For every minor success in Return of the Evil Dead, there are a large number of problem areas, resulting in a deeply flawed viewing experience.

The setup is basic: the Knights Templar are resurrected by the “village idiot,” and a band of survivors must struggle to outlast the night as the deadly knights shuffle slowly through a small town. The plot strands injected to create drama among the heroes—mostly involving lust toward a character named Vivian—are flimsy.

The film starts promisingly with a prologue that establishes the Knights Templar and the brutal ritual that led to them becoming the Blind Dead (a term that, ironically, is missing from this film’s main title is many regions). Following this, however, we move into the more modern setting and a stretch of tedium. The town is preparing for a party, and an outsider, Jack, has been hired to put on a firework display, putting him at odds with the mayor and his cronies. When a character named Murdo sacrifices a girl, the blood revives the Templars, prompting a ravaging onslaught of… footage and music from the previous film—a tell-tale sign of this sequel’s laziness. There is some chaotic fun as a large party descends into a battle with the marauding knights and becomes the most ambitious scene of this sequel.

Thereafter, the audience must contend with the increasingly illogical actions of the survivors. The biggest issue is a plot revelation that destroys the Templars’ menace: since the Knights are blind, they rely on sound to locate their victims—meaning if the characters tiptoe, they are ignored. This revelation single-handedly takes away a massive amount of the threat and elevates the audience’s fury as the survivors find this guideline difficult to follow.

Combined with poor camera placement, the characters often seem useless as they are slowly surrounded and unable to outrun the lumbering threat. A chase sequence involving a Mini Moke and some horse-backed knights also frustrates, with the car continually stopping to assess the danger and choose a direction to flee, allowing the horses to catch up repeatedly.

The film does manage fleeting moments of welcome character development. I enjoyed the potentially interesting relationship between the Mayor’s henchman, Howard, and the hero, Jack. As Jack takes control of the group, Howard actually supports Jack’s plans against the mayor’s adversity. This character arc showed welcome potential in an otherwise flat storyline. The mayor himself is a self-centered and nasty piece of work whose actions are arguably more horrific than those of the Templar.

Conversely, the paths of Mundro and the character Moncha are baffling. Mundro’s attempts to talk Moncha into joining his bid for survival must be lost in translation, as his reasoning is pathetically unconvincing. Their story becomes a little more entertaining that the main plotline as they dig through tunnels and caverns in an attempt to escape.

The most disappointing element is the lack of an ending. The film doesn’t culminate in any meaningful way. While one could argue it leaves the door open for a sequel, it’s really about having to spend a life-threatening night with a narcissist, only to have the life-threatening circumstance simply… go away after the narcissist is taken out of the equation. This deeply unsatisfying non-climax leaves the audience with nothing resolved except the trauma of a lone child. Return of the Evil Dead was a hard film for me to dislike given the calibre of the original. It lazily tries to repeat the first film’s footprint, and everything about it is, at best, half-baked, failing at almost every opportunity. Given this result, I sincerely hope those who call this the low point in the franchise are right.