Newsletter | Horror's Homemade Arsenal, As Deployed By The Evil Dead
Chainsaws, blenders, clotheslines, cheese graters. The most terrifying horror is created when everyday objects turn into weapons of mass destruction as in the Evil Dead movies, writes Prahlad Srihari.
Jun 11, 2023
Still from Evil Dead Rise
This column was originally published as part of our newsletter Stream Of Consciousness on June 11, 2023. Subscribe here. (We're awesome about not spamming your inbox!)
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IN a scene from Evil Dead Rise a kitchen essential becomes an improvised weapon in the hands of a possessed teenage girl. The girl, Bridget (Gabrielle Echols), attacks her pregnant aunt Beth (Lily Sullivan) with a cheese grater, pushing it against her shin, running it down to her ankle, peeling away bits of skin and flesh, and digging into her anxieties about losing her body and her identity to the all-consuming possession that can be motherhood. The scene is sure to make your skin crawl. Worse: you may not see gajar ka halwa or cheddar the same way again.
Evil Dead Rise is the MacGyver-meets-Martha Stewart of horror movies. Resourcefulness is the name of the game. Writer-director Lee Cronin embraces a grab-what-you-can philosophy as he relocates the franchise from the traditional cabin in the woods setting to a ramshackle high-rise apartment building due for demolition. When the horrors unleashed by the Necronomicon force a family into lockdown with no way out, both the family and the Deadites use the limited resources of a closed-off world to their advantage.
Our homes are meant to be a sanctuary from the unpredictable chaos of the world outside. The violation of that sense of safety by demonic forces in the movie causes an upheaval of the domestic realm. Everyday objects reveal their latent hostile intent. In every kitchen is a makeshift arsenal: besides cheese graters, there are knives, scissors, forks, skillets, kettles, blenders, stoves and waste disposal units, all of which have come in handy in horror movies past. In capable hands, any innocuous household object can turn into a lethal weapon. Erin (Sharni Vinson) in You’re Next smashes a blender on top of an assailant’s head, plugs it in, turns it on and lets the blades do the rest. Even in not-so-capable hands, objects can be used to at least deflect, defend or distract. Shaun (Simon Pegg) and Ed (Nick Frost), in Shaun of the Dead hurl vinyls at incoming zombies. When that doesn’t work, a cricket bat or the more versatile fire extinguisher (which can in fact be used for short-range beatings as well as long-range blindings) does the trick.
The first to become possessed in Evil Dead Rise is Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland): tattoo artist, older sister of Beth, and mom to Bridget, Danny (Morgan Davies) and Kassie (Nell Fisher). Not surprisingly, the tool of her trade becomes a weapon in her hand. Ellie dips the needle of her tattoo gun in Deadite-stained blood from her own bruised temple and nearly pokes Bridget’s eye out before stabbing the young girl in the cheek and licking the cut with her bloody tongue to set the seal on the second possession. Ellie’s youngest Kassie proves to be quite the improviser herself. She has her own homemade weapon — a pointed staff topped with the impaled head of a creepy doll she calls Staffanie — which she drives right through Bridget’s skull. Desperate circumstances call for lo-fi ingenuity. Shortly thereafter, when Ellie sneaks up on Beth, Kassie slides her aunt a pair of scissors which she jams right up Ellie’s nostril.
No franchise reconstitutes immediate surroundings into death traps quite like the Final Destination series. If you swindle Death out of its body count, Death will influence every element in its grasp into conspiring against you via domino effect. Characters in the movies get strangled by a laundry line in a bathtub, barbecued to a crisp in a tanning bed, decapitated by an elevator, minced by an escalator, crushed by a weight machine — each a nightmare extension of the cautionary tales about accidents that children are sometimes told. In a similar spirit, the camera in Evil Dead Rise beholds the cheese grater, the scissor and Staffanie — each an object with a disguised purpose, each as much a metaphor for survivalism as a symbol for minimalism — like Chekhov’s Guns.
Speaking of guns, the Americans’ undying love for their Second Amendment can no doubt be a luxury in horror movies. In the new Evil Dead however, the sole shotgun, a neighbour’s, is disarmed and rendered useless in no time. Indeed, what use are guns once the ammo runs dry? It’s why melee weapons make for much more intimidating instruments of death in the slow tease of a hunt. Where would Leatherface be without his chainsaw, Michael Myers without his butcher knife, or Jason Voorhees without his machete? Dead, sentenced for life, or unmasking the root of their pathologies with their therapists no doubt. Horror’s most gruesome purveyors of mass murder on screen would not have racked up their formidable kill counts without the tools of their trade. For many, the weapons are practically an inseparable extension of their hands.
Of all the power tools that make for weapons, the chainsaw is perhaps the most terrifying: its toothed blade combined with its piercing roar provide an adrenaline rush to chase sequences. Think of Leatherface chasing after Sally in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and swinging the weapon in a frenzy against the sunrise. Or a naked and bloodied Patrick Bateman in American Psycho chasing after a prostitute down a hallway wielding the same. The Evil Dead movies wouldn’t be what they are without Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) and his chainsaw-hand. When decapitating his possessed girlfriend Linda’s head with a shovel doesn’t kill her for good in the 1981 original, Ash tears into her head with a chainsaw in the sequel — but not before she takes a bite out of his right hand. To avoid the Deadite infection from spreading any further, he chops the hand off and attaches a chainsaw on the stump, creating his iconic look.
For another sequel, a TV series and several video games, the chainsaw and a double-barrelled shotgun (which Ash calls Boomstick) prove to be his most trusted allies against the armies of the dead. As franchise devotees expect, the chainsaw has a starring role in the grand finales of both Evil Dead Rise and its 2013 predecessor Evil Dead. Beth slices up the unholy hybrid of Deadite Ellie, Bridget and Danny and shoves it through a wood chipper, drenching her and Kassie in a downpour of blood rain. Blood pours down from the sky even in Evil Dead (2013) until the final girl Mia (Jane Levy) jams a chainsaw down the throat of a Deadite abomination.
Nonetheless, the blood-and-gore kill scenes aren’t always what make for nightmare fuel. Playing off everyday situations with nightmare logic, as the cheese grater scene does, is what can put you off sleep for a while or longer. Like watching Bridget chew, then swallow, a wine glass whose shards pierce her throat from the inside as they go down. Or in Evil Dead (2013), when a possessed Mia licks the blade of a box cutter that ends up slicing her tongue in half — and thereby carving its place in the annals of horror history. Such scenes crawl their way into the deepest recesses of our minds and tend to make camp, waiting to be recalled.
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