Having read Bill Warren's "Evil Dead Companion", Bruce Campbell's "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor" and Josh Becker's "Evil Dead Journal" (available online at beckerfilms.com) the story of the production of Sam Raimi's classic 1981 film "The Evil Dead" is becoming somewhat tedious. That said, I still managed to learn some new "Evil Dead" info in Muir's book. The main draw of this book is that it gives all of Raimi's films equal coverage, rather than focusing on his two franchises. The aforementioned books by Warren and Campbell are probably better choices if you're simply an "Evil Dead" trilogy fan and Mark Cotta Vaz's books on the production of "Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 2" (which has a pretty skimpy chapter in "The Unseen Force", but to be fair, the author couldn't have seen it in time for publication) focus mostly on the conceptual stage and offer little insight into Raimi as a director. It's nice to see "Crimewave", "Darkman", "The Quick and the Dead", "A Simple Plan" (Raimi's best film, as far as I'm concerned), "For Love of the Game" and "The Gift" getting some attention rather than used as context for the cinematic adventures of Ash and Peter Parker. The writing is scholarly but enjoyable, and Muir's interviews with Ian Abercrombie, Betsy Baker, Douglas Beswick, Brent Briscoe, Gary Cole, Kevin Conway, Willem Dafoe, Peter Deming, Chris Doyle, Phil Gillis, Daniel Goldin, Richard Grove, Lance Henricksen, Joe LoDuca, William Mesa, Simon Moore, Verne Nobles, Tim Philo, Robert Primes A.S.C., Thell Reed, Cliff Robertson, Amy Robinson, Chelcie Ross, Ellen Sandweiss, Randy Ser, Thomas Smith, Dana Stevens, Tom Sullivan, Theresa Tilly, Sherree J. Wilson and Christopher Young offer a more diversified portrait of Raimi as a filmmaker than previous books (although this is the first to focus primarily on Raimi himself). If there is one area where the book lacks, it is in the actual biographical details. The death of Raimi's older brother Sander, a tragic and defining moment in his childhood, is glossed over, and a few childhood stories in the tradition of Campbell's book would have been nice (nobody from the Raimi family was interviewed for the book, nor was Campbell) but as a look at Raimi's cinematic accomplishments, "The Unseen Force" doesn't disappoint.