The Evil Dead movies are better at being funny than they are at being scary, so I’m pleased to see the burgeoning sense of parody in Evil Dead II. Still, there are many slow moments in the movie due to it still partly trying to be a genuinely tense and spooky horror movie, and I feel this mix actually makes the strengths lopsided. There’s also the sense that Evil Dead II thoroughly feels like a direct sequel—that it picks up in the middle of something. It holds up awkwardly on its own.