The actual penetration is fast and brutal, but Raimi doesn’t linger on it - there are a lot of shots of smoke in front of lights, representations of Cheryl’s point of view intended to counterpoint the Deadite POV through the early parts of the rape. It’s sheer exploitation, but in Raimi’s hands it’s almost shattering in its depiction of Cheryl trying to maintain any of her dignity. There’s a moment where Ellen Sandweiss' Cheryl, pinned to the ground by prehensile roots and branches, desperately attempts to cover her bare breast as the tree rips her hand away. Raimi, even when he’s going too far, is an impeccable craftsman, and the sequence is horrifying and creepy and powerfully intense. The original The Evil Dead tree rape is actually incredible filmmaking. Not to make that comparison but I think my judgement was a little wrong at that time.” “I know that a lot of nineteen year olds that are stealing cars and murdering people. He chalks it up to being a kid when he made the film, a kid who maybe wasn’t thinking it through. It is to entertain, thrill, scare.make them laugh but not to offend them.” And finally because people were offended in a way that I didn't.my goal is not to offend people. Talking in this video interview, Raimi says, “I think it was unnecessarily gratuitous and a little too brutal. Before we get to why, let’s talk about the history of the tree rape, and it was presented in The Evil Dead.Īccording to Sam Raimi, he regrets having it in the original film. There were a lot of moments like that in the film, tons of Family Guy-esque ‘This reminds me of the time there was a chainsaw in the previous Evil Dead movies,’ bits of fanservice.
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I won’t judge that crowd too harshly (well, the “YEAH!” guy probably needs to be put in jail, but the rest.) because I suspect what was happening was they were responding in a Pavlovian fashion to a callback from the original film, which also featured a brutal rape by tree. I had been having a hard time getting into the film, and that reaction really pulled me right out of it.
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The most disturbing part of the SXSW premiere screening of Evil Dead 2013 came after the tree rape scene, when the hundreds of people in the Paramount Theater erupted into applause. Most of the spoilers, such as they are, have been revealed in trailers and clips released online. There are minor spoilers for the Evil Dead remake within.