Last night I went to see Evil Dead: The Musical. Now if you grew up submerged in pop culture like I have (my mom owned a video store, after all), you’d be very much aware of the cult film phenomenon. What makes a cult film a cult film, is not always the great story, the special effects, the immaculate cinematography or superb acting. Sometimes it is exactly the inverse of these elements. Sometimes, it is the “badness” of a film that makes it great. Evil Dead (1983), written and directed by Sam Raimi (the guy that brought us the recent Spider-Man movies), is such a film.
Five teenagers journey into the woods to a cabin where they accidently unleash demonic forces and one by one turn into zombies. One of the five, Ash, is the last man standing and has to battle through the night to survive. In the process he saws of his possessed hand and replaces the hand with a chainsaw. Evil Dead is pure popcorn violence with lots of blood and gore, but I doubt people ever find it scary. It is too over the top to be taken seriously. And that is probably the fun. Once you see the movie you will realise how influential this film has been to pop culture. The amount of references made in other movies and in pop culture to Evil Dead is amazing.
So when I heard that Evil Dead: The Musical is playing in Seoul, I just had to see it.
The musical is a remake of the original Canadian musical. Of course the Korean version is all Korean, but having had seen the movie (probably more than once), the plot was easy to follow. It is a fun musical with lots of singing and dancing (and some references to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” [YouTube-video]), silliness, and fake blood splattering over the front rows. The audience is made up of mostly women, shrieking and cheering.
Evil Dead: The Musical is not everybody’s cup of tea, but I enjoyed it. Will I go see it again? Probably not. I’d rather go see the very fun Jump! [short video clip], the talented break dancers of The Ballerina that Fell in Love with a B-Boy [video clip] or rock-musical Line 1 again. Another Korean musical which I’d still like to see is the percussion play, Tokebi Storm. If I can afford it I plan to go see Cirque du Soleil currently performing in Seoul.
1 comment:
Haha. I thought it was a movie you saw. So that was LIVE musical. wow. That's amazing, fake blood on the audience. That reminds me of seeing "King Lear" and getting wet in the "rainstorm" there was. That was fun.
You should go see Tokebi Storm. The tokebi were hilarious. I think it cost 40,000 won-which isn't too bad, but still an expensive night out. Cirque du Soleil is something I want to see. Varekai was once nearby, but I didn't get around to seeing it. I heard they have a water show in Las Vegas, and that would be interesting to see.
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