Within the Woods

Within the Woods (1979) is Sam Raimi's 32-minute horror short you can watch online on iFILM. Two couples retreat to a remote cabin; Bruce digs up a Native American burial knife on a whim and vanishes into the trees. His girlfriend goes looking. She finds him. And that is where things turn dark.

Shot on a shoestring budget with friends — Bruce Campbell and Ellen Sandweiss leading — the film was Raimi's pitch reel to lure investors. It worked: the creature logic, the woods, the creeping dread all fed directly into The Evil Dead (1981). Think of it as the raw blueprint, rougher and more stripped-down than its famous descendant, but unmistakably the same DNA. Watch Within the Woods online on iFILM.