Evil Dead 2 (1987)

Source: IMDb.

Ever feel like the Universe is fucking with you?

Early March, and my 86-year-old mother was out of the hospital after surgery. She lived in a house in the woods. If you looked up Ass-Crack-of-Nowhere on the map, you’d find it. My mom couldn’t drive anymore but she had a live-in caregiver, whom she hated with a white-hot passion.

She was having mini-strokes (TIAs), or maybe they were cluster migraines. The huckleberry doctors had no clue how to treat or prevent them, so who gives a shit what they’re called?

It always went the same way. She’d have stroke-like symptoms, slurred speech, disorientation, weakness in an arm or a leg. The caregiver, who did not drive in the country, called for an ambulance.

The ambulance made the half-hour drive to the ER. By the time they arrived, my mother would be fully recovered. TIAs are temporary and last less than an hour. They are also indistinguishable from a stroke, which meant she had to visit the ER every single time.

Cut to that night in early March. My mom had stroke-like symptoms again, this time much worse than usual. She could only talk in grunts. Up where she lived, it was starting to snow. I told the caregiver to go with my mother in the ambulance to the hospital.

This meant I had to pick her up, because the caregiver had no way to get back. I lived two and a half hours away from the hospital. The snow had turned into a blizzard. It didn’t matter. I got in my shitty Toyota and drove.

*

Ash, the hero of Evil Dead 2, also owns a shitty car. We have that in common. It’s an Oldsmobile instead of a Toyota, but you can tell that his odometer’s been around the block a few times.

Ash spends the first thirtyish minutes of the movie alone in the cabin being tormented by the Deadites, demons who live in the trees. This is the best part of Evil Dead 2, hands down. I think the Deadites could kill Ash whenever they want. But they’re having way too much fun.

Ash’s girlfriend is possessed by demons and attacks him. He decapitates her with a shovel and buries her. Later, her body rises from the grave and her severed head rolls onto his lap and bites him.

This leads to Ash’s hand becoming infected by demons. He chops it off, but the spunky little feller races off into the cabin. This leads to a sequence where Ash tries to kill his wayward limb.

The violence in the first half hour of Evil Dead 2 is so extreme and surreal it becomes slapstick. Bruce Campbell, the actor who plays Ash, pulls it off. He’s dealing with forces beyond his control bent on fucking with him.

If it feels personal, that’s because it is personal. The Deadites love Ash, in the same way cats love the mice they play with. And then they eat them, which the Deadites try to do, shrieking ‘SWALLOW YOUR SOUL’ at the top of their lungs.

Eventually four other people enter the cabin, and the movie morphs into a more normal horror movie. But the first half-hour of Evil Dead 2 is batshit crazy in a way I’ve never seen replicated.

I reached the gas station off the highway. From there, it was a forty minute ride to the hospital. It was snowing like that scene in The Shining. There was no way I was reaching the hospital. Except what other choice did I have?

The guy in the little convenience store in the gas station told me not to try the highway, which at this point was an icy deathtrap. He said they’d just treated the two lane country road that went through the woods and led to the hospital.

I opted for the country road. The Toyota was a stick. I drove the entire way in first gear, cruising along at five to ten miles per hour. A forty minute trip took me three hours. I saw nobody. If I crashed, I would’ve been fucked. I didn’t crash.

It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Or not seen, because visibility was nil. Just trees, a snow-covered road, and snow. Lots and lots of snow. I felt like I was the star of some sort of fucked up horror movie.

I also felt like the Universe was fucking with me. Just like it fucked with Ash. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury of a sawed-off shotgun to deal with the situation.

It was just me vs. the forces of the Universe! Did I really think the Universe was against me? No. I realized that the Universe didn’t give a fuck. It didn’t even give me the luxury of a chainsaw battle with a Deadite. Just a bunch of snow and an ailing mother.

The cherry on the hot fudge sundae was arriving and finding my mom fully recovered. I checked the caregiver and myself into separate rooms at a nearby hotel, where we spent the night.

A week or two later, the caregiver gave notice. Who can blame her? She wasn’t getting paid enough to put up with this shit. Neither was I. Unlike her, I couldn’t give notice. But I often thought about getting in my car and driving away.

Even if it was in Ash’s shitty Oldsmobile.