Army of Darkness
Army of Darkness
Réalisation:
Sam RaimiPhotographie:
Bill PopeActeurs·trices:
Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert, Ian Abercrombie, Bridget Fonda, Patricia Tallman, Ted Raimi, Josh Becker, Harley Cokeliss (plus)VOD (1)
Résumés(1)
Une tronçonneuse greffée au poignet, un fusil à canon scié dans l’autre main, Ash Williams se retrouve propulsé en l’an 1300. Là, il lui faut retrouver le Nécronomicon. Très vite, ses recherches le mènent à devoir affronter une armée de squelettes… (ESC Distribution)
Critiques (11)
An hour and a half of unbridled fun. The film pretends to be horror, but there is nothing to be afraid of, it’s just fun and marveling at what Raimi has come up with again. There are countless gags and when you add Bruce Campbell, my personal cult actor with charisma to spare, the fun is guaranteed. Clearly the best film of the Evil Dead trilogy!
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The weakest part of the trilogy hands down. I would love a fourth, serious part of Evil Dead that would return to its horror roots.
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This isn't a horror movie, it's a perfect fantasy comedy. It's brutal, violent, full of dry one-liners and terribly funny.
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Raimi continues beyond the surreal Evil Dead 2 carnival into the realm of infantile pleasure and unfettered phantasmagoria. Campbell is the greatest hero to have ever worn household goods, and of the whole trilogy, I enjoyed this film the most. Probably even from the whole of Raimi's filmography. A festival of jokes and knee-deep fiction, in which the technical imperfection seems to me to be an integral part of the game. The much more perfect (and built on the same plot), whilst paradoxically less playful and imaginative, Oz: The Great and Powerful, is evidence of this.
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A feature-length reinforcement of the cult named Bruce Campbell. The story is non-existent, the atmosphere too and the other actors aren’t even worth a mention. But Bruce and his charisma make all of these negatives seem so petty. The end of the trilogy where Sam Raimi and his ingenious and inventive directing or any kind of a story is important anymore. It’s all about Bruce here, Bruce and... did I say that Bruce plays in this?
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Army of Darkness should have been many things, especially in the eyes of fans of the preceding films of the Evil Dead franchise, but also partly from the perspective of the filmmakers, which is reflected in, among other things, the existence of four different versions of the film. In the end, the version released to cinemas remains the best, as it condenses the essence of the film and of Raimi’s style. The result is the most comic-bookish film not based on a comic book and the best animated movie in a live-action format. Raimi makes Ash a dime-a-dozen hero along the lines of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, or rather Tommy Monaghan or even Jérôme Moucherot, who keeps finding himself in all kinds of goofy adventures in various genre settings. In addition to that, he gives his previously completely unexplored hero an appropriately absurd background, or even an origin story. But he also endows him with a distinct personality for the first time in a parody of tough-guy comic-book heroes, thus making him not only ultra-macho, but peculiarly also a ridiculous simpleton, asshole and buffoon. Contingent on a contractual commitment to the studio, Raimi conceived this sequel to the Evil Dead franchise as a pure provocation in which he unrestrainedly piles up frantic fantasy premises and joyfully plays around with special effects. Thanks to the fantasy framework, he was able to paraphrase and elaborate on his favourite special-effects sequences from Gulliver's Travels and Jason and the Argonauts in his own style. On top of that, he had at his disposal both an adequate budget to execute a range of delightfully handmade and honestly primitive tricks, and mainly the living visual effect that is Bruce Campbell. Army of Darkness definitively established Campbell’s persona as an actor, which many of his later roles would paraphrase (and which is fundamentally different from his actual nature). We could even say that this stylised Campbell is the film’s main character, as indicated by “Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness” in the opening credits. Raimi self-indulgently counters the character traits described above by making the actor the live-action equivalent of animated slapstick characters. In Evil Dead II, he let Campbell’s slapstick acting shine spectacularly, for the purpose of he again creates entirely gratuitous but enchantingly entertaining sequences interspersed with other visual effects. Raimi works with Campbell as he would with an animated figure that he can deform in all possible ways, multiply and, mainly, expose to bizarrely painful but, at the same time, non-injurious hardships. We can also find parallels with the expressive means of animation rather than live-action film in other formalistic aspects of Army of Darkness. Raimi thus variously combines action with live actors and stop-motion animation and finds ingenious ways to handle the shots of the army of the dead by combining the background with actors in costume with puppet animation in the foreground. Of the myriad imaginatively shot sequences with toy-like qualities, I’ll highlight the fight with the witch, where Raimi uses various techniques to enhance the impression of fast and wild action. In addition to slow motion and leaving out frames, we can find here another method used exclusively by animators of slapstick films, who do not draw anatomically accurate phases of movement in individual frames, but instead deliberately draw them in a deformed or exaggerated manner in order to make a more spectacular impression. In the shot where Campbell throws a roundhouse kick at the witch, Raimi added the sole of the protagonist’s shoe to one frame in post-production. The viewer barely notices this while watching, but our senses register and evaluate the perception with the appropriately enhanced effect.
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(moins)
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The situation with Sam Raimi is strange - his early films have an unshakable cult status, even though they have been significantly affected by the passage of time, and if I were to go back to Evil Dead or Evil Dead II, I would probably need a stiff drink to encourage me because otherwise, they would seem too stupid to me. However, it is evident that they were made by someone who can do better. With each subsequent film, Raimi improved and each of his films had a weaker impact on the audience. Army of Darkness is not the younger sibling of the two aforementioned low-budget slasher films and instead is a much older relative of Raimi's film Drag Me to Hell. It is a horror comedy, where the director makes fun of genre clichés, horror props, over-the-top heroes of B-movie trash, and even himself. It can be criticized in a hundred and one ways, but it is filmed with such irony and quite a distinctive directorial style, that I generously overlook those flaws. It is entertaining, and undemanding, but not stupid, and in my opinion, it is the first work in his filmography that withstands stricter standards. Bruce Campbell with his lines, faces, and proverbial audacity simply gets to you and you instantly forgive Raimi for the lack of a proper script and the need for improvement in all aspects. Overall impression: 60%.
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Rather than a horror film, this turned out to be a fantasy comedy full of wisecracks. And that's good. Campbell brings Ash's character to perfection. Raimi must have read Conan stories as a kid, and Army Of Darkness is part tribute and part parody of his adventures. I'm kind of curious if they're going to eventually make a fourth installment, and if they do, you can bet I'm going to go see it.
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If I were to say that Evil Dead 2 is Bruce Campbell's one man show, what am I supposed to say about Army of Darkness? I know, it's a show of several Bruce Campbells (of different sizes). The story doesn't seem to exist, but everything from the beginning to the end is pushed by Ash and charming special effects, which are really abundant here. While the escapades in the windmill are reminiscent of the hand scene from the second film, the final battle with the "Harryhausen" skeletons is unique. And I haven't even mentioned yet how funny Army of Darkness is (no, it really doesn't have much to do with horror). What I liked most was Ash picking the right Necronomicon (when his deformed head looked very, very, very strikingly like Al Pacino) and his irresistible recitation of the three key words.
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Where are the days when versatile directors dared to make something so incredibly outlandish. What I love about Army of Darkness is how Raimi subversively embellishes every filmmaking choice with the ultimate bizarre fantasy fable. The whole thing is based on hackneyed chivalric tales about the chosen hero, which the inventive director turns into a pure parody with a protagonist who repeatedly worsens the situation and behaves like the complete opposite of the ideal hero (he is rude to women and mean to his subjects, constantly harms himself, and unleashes the army of the dead due to his own sloppiness). The script is bursting with original ideas, and the work with style and environment is funny, too, highlighting the various parodied scenes (fire and silhouettes of characters in the love scene, close-ups in the heroic moments, quick-motion in the scene with the two Ashes). The effects may look outdated, but that’s very fitting. And yet the focus is entirely on the awesome Bruce Campbell, who gives one of the funniest performances I've ever seen (I'd give him an Oscar for the mill and cemetery sequences alone). It's definitely very guilty pleasure and sometimes out of control, but that makes me love it all the more and throw in that subjective fifth star.
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A bombastic array of excellent "fights" with the dead, a huge number of great original ideas, a wonderful sense of perspective, and the divine Campbell. Overall, I really like the way Raimi conceived the whole trilogy – he started with a pretty serious horror film, then defined a new genre in which he mixed horror elements with comedy elements, and then conceived the final part as pure comedy. Even though I was laughing a lot of times ;))), this instalment is still the weakest of the whole series for me.
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