Bruce Campbell Versus an Entire Medieval Army of Idiots
Nerdy Up North
The setup
After being thrown back into medieval England, Ash Williams is mistaken for a prophesied hero and forced to recover the Necronomicon. Naturally, he messes that up and ends up helping defend a castle against an army of Deadites led by his own evil double.
This is what happens when Sam Raimi gets bored of making Evil Dead movies and decides he wants skeleton armies, slapstick, time travel and medieval knights instead. And the best part is that Bruce Campbell finally gets to deliver the sort of ridiculous one-liners Ash feels like he was born to say.
Ash, as always, is an absolute idiot, and that is a massive part of why I love him so much. He is arrogant, rude and completely convinced that because he understands modern technology better than a bunch of medieval villagers, he must be the smartest person in the room. He isn’t. In fact, he manages to create the entire problem he then has to solve because he cannot follow one simple instruction.
Bruce Campbell completely owns the character by this point. He goes all in on every stupid facial expression, pratfall and bit of physical comedy, and somehow makes Ash being completely useless just as entertaining as watching him fight the Deadites.
The effects are all over the place in the best possible way. There are stop-motion skeletons, puppets, prosthetics and miniature versions of Ash attacking the full-sized one. None of it blends together perfectly, but I genuinely think that adds to the character of the film. Trying to make everything look realistic would probably ruin half the fun.
The cemetery sequence with the three books is basically the entire movie in miniature. Ash has one job, makes every possible wrong decision and somehow manages to make everything considerably worse. Watching him repeatedly fail at something that should be simple makes me cringe, but it is also completely in character.
If you are expecting the nastiness of The Evil Dead, you might be disappointed. There are still monsters and gore, but Army of Darkness feels much more like a live-action cartoon than a straight horror film.
For me, that is actually what makes it an improvement over Evil Dead II. If I want something ridiculous, funny and endlessly quotable, I would pick this one. Army of Darkness isn't remotely sensible, but thankfully nobody involved seems to have cared about being sensible.
Positives
Bruce Campbell is at his absolute best, the practical effects are full of personality, Sam Raimi's camera work is wonderfully ridiculous and the film is endlessly quotable.
Negatives
Anyone wanting genuine horror may be disappointed and the episodic story sometimes feels like a collection of comedy set pieces loosely tied together.
Verdict
Army of Darkness is stupid with complete confidence, which is much harder to do than it sounds. Give me Bruce Campbell, a chainsaw and a skeleton army and I am happy.
