“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” – H.P. Lovecraft
The horror genre is one of the oldest genres of film with many different sub-genres and hybrids. But no matter what type of horror film you watch, it is always visually clear through the use of its generic conventions. Evil Dead 2 (Sam Raimi, 1987) is in the horror/comedy hybrid genre. In many different ways, the film uses the conventions of both of these genres, and adheres to and subverts audience expectations. During the film, Ash and his girlfriend travel to a cabin in the woods, which we later find out has been taken over by a demon; we see Ash, along with four others, try and defeat the demon and escape from the cabin. In this essay, I will explore how Evil Dead 2 uses genre conventions and adheres to and subverts audience expectations.
The first genre that Evil Dead 2 shows generic conventions of is horror. In films of this genre, we expect to see blood and gore, death, as well as a ‘monster’ that is the threat of the film. The ‘monster’ in the film is a demon that takes possession of different characters, such as Ash’s girlfriend, Annie’s parents and a tree outside the cabin. In the scene where the tree attacks Bobby Joe, we see her try and escape, but instead gets attacked and dragged around by the tree vines until she dies; this is anchored by a tense and dramatic score and low-key lighting, which intensifies the ‘emotional effect’ of the scene, making it scarier for the audience. Her clothes also get torn and her face gets covered in blood. As we hear her screams of fear, this is exactly what we expect to see from the protagonists of a horror film, who are being terrorised by the antagonist. This presents the demon as a monster and a ‘villain’ character, who is causing a disruption to the ‘equilibrium’; the audience expect this as it is an unnatural being, causing a threat to the characters, who have a scared reaction.
Another generic convention used is in Evil Dead 2 is jump scares. This technique is a classic trope of a horror film, as it lures the audience into a false sense of security, before scaring them even more. One particular jump scare in Evil Dead 2 is when Linda, Ash’s dead girlfriend, flies off into the distance. Just as Ash thinks he’s safe, she suddenly pops back up at the window and makes him scream. This is used to shake up the audience as we have a fear of the unexpected. This makes the audience feel more engaged and involved with the film, as they are having the same reactions as the characters on screen, almost like putting the audience in the characters shoes; as the audience, we feel like the thing jumping out is coming towards us and not the character.
The use of horror conventions in the film means that it adheres to the audience expectations of the genre. When we go into a horror film, the audience expect to see the antagonist as a monster set to scare us. This is similar to more modern films such as Paranormal Activity. This film uses a similar monster, a demon that cannot be seen, unless they are possessing other characters. We see the demon dragging the female character out of bed and down the stairs by her legs, similarly to the way that the tree pulled Bobby Joe around with its vines. This sort of monster is often used as the audience is scared of the unnatural and those that we can’t see.
Another main genre in this film is comedy. Throughout the film, we see a lot of over exaggerated actions and fascial expressions, as well as catch phrases and puns used for comedy, giving the film a parody feel.
One scene in particular that uses this is when they are trying to fight off a zombie demon who is trying to escape from the basement. As Ash stomps on the zombies’ head, their eye ball flies out of the skull towards Bobby Joe; we see this in a point of view shot from the point of view of the eye, as it flies into Bobby Joe’s mouth.
This gives us a clear shot of Bobby Joe’s exaggerated fascial expression of shock and fear; the over exaggerated style is funny to the audience, as the reaction is so extravagant and unrealistic, that we forget about the demon that we should be scared of and focus on her instead. This makes the audience realise that the action on screen is so ridiculous that it would never really happen, making it less scary.
The use of comedy makes this a hybrid genre of horror and comedy, but overall subverts the horror genre. Another horror film that uses this is Scream; in the scene where we see Tatum’s death in the garage, she tries to escape through the cat flap but gets stuck as the garage door lifts up. Her over exaggerated movements are used to make the scene funnier and less scary for the audience, which we would not always expect from a horror film; audiences watch horror films wanting to be scared, not necessarily to laugh. This comedy is often used when the filmmakers are very aware of the genre tropes used in horror that’s are often overdone and have become cliché. Comedy helps them to make reference to other films and almost make fun of the stereotypical conventions used.
In conclusion, Evil Dead 2 uses many different genre conventions, and adheres to and subverts audience expectations. All of the generic horror conventions can be found, such as gore, death and fear. However, the film subverts expectations by using comedy to make fun of the horror tropes that have been used so many times.
References
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