By Joe Gibson
Some Preamble
When I was a small child,
I was actually afraid of many of the cult films we look at on this blog.
Indeed, the Nilbog goblins joined the ranks of vampires and zombies in my early
nightmares, and, even after overcoming that, the abominations affectionately
called Deadites from The Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 terrified me deeper than
anything. That’s a credit to the creatures and filmmaking on display. Though
the films were cheap, the writing a little shaky, and the performances
unrefined, there was something so maximally uncomfortable about the Deadites
that stuck with me during my glimpses through closed fingers while my father
watched those films. Everything that is scary about demonic possession and
everything that is scary about zombies came together in that delightfully
warped package. Bruce Campbell, as the guy who could defeat them, naturally
took on a somewhat mythic status, though I preferred to watch his Spider-Man
cameos and The Man With The Screaming Brain.
Of course, over the
years, I have grown up a little. After measured exposure to Evil Dead 2, I
could appreciate the physical comedy that goes hand in hand with the terror.
Last October, I revisited the franchise (almost) as a whole, and, though I
watched with rapt attention, the irrational fear was gone, replaced with
analytical interest. You can find some of these thoughts in a video we put on
the YouTube channel discussing the franchise here (Podcast 47: Plan9Crunch
vs Evil Dead).
At the time, though not
necessarily enjoying it as much as the original trilogy, I was rather
sympathetic to Evil Dead 2013 to the point where I thought it sufficed to say
that they were all pretty much on the same level quality-wise, especially
because they each shared some of the same issues (worldbuilding
inconsistencies, lack of that many great performances, etc.). In order to be
able to make the ‘they all have bad acting’ point, I skipped Evil Dead Rise
(because, as I was recently able to validate, aside from some accent slippage
at times, there is not a single bad performance in the 2023 film). My main
point of interest in the franchise, however, became the notion that if you
stitched the first three films together and lopped off the recap segments from
Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, then you have a really interesting
psychological thriller character study about Ash Williams. Think about
it.
Without the benefit of
being distinct films, the gradual tonal shifts from horror to slapstick comedy
must take on another meaning, and the story becomes even more compelling if Ash
losing his mind in the second film leads to him viewing the Deadites through
the lens of the comedy shorts he would have grown up watching. Add back in the
repetition of certain motifs (his hand fights him the way the little people in
Army of Darkness do, there is always a Deadite in a pit or cellar he must
venture into, and Ash gets a procession of doomed love interests and doomed
friends until he finally can save them in the third film), and you also have
the question of narrator reliability (which can explain the inconsistencies
such as the book getting destroyed in the first film, Cheryl and Henrietta
maybe kind of sharing that cellar and why the films themselves keep
misremembering what Linda looked like).
In just a little over a
month, Evil Dead Burn will come out in theaters, and, based on the trailer, it
looks like it is following up on the disconnected “Deadite Jessica” bookends
from Evil Dead Rise, so it is time to update my Evil Dead franchise thoughts
here for you all. So, as if foreordained, a couple weeks ago, I randomly had a
nightmare replicating the fears I used to have of the Deadites, where I was
holed up in my bathroom as Deadites were trying to get in. This past week, I
watched Evil Dead Rise, and it definitely has changed my opinions on the
franchise in some notable ways. I figured the most prudent way to explain this
is a ranking, since it is fairly common to rank a horror series right before
the latest installment drops. Once Evil Dead Burn comes out, we will likely
discuss it on our YouTube page, but I think I may also rewatch the other films
around that time and give another updated ranking with Evil Dead Burn as well.
Still, that will take a while, so let us get into this one now.
Ranking
#5
The major impact Evil
Dead Rise has had on my assessment of this franchise is that I am no longer a
2013 Evil Dead apologist, and, in large part, that comes down to the Deadites.
These Deadites are the weakest in the entire series, succumbing to mere amputation
at times, and, outside of Mia, they don’t really talk so they might as well not
even be Deadites but some other self-mutilating mutation the Book of the Dead
can come up with. The more pressing problems arise with the new possibility for
recovery that the film shows with Mia…but did not really bother to set up when
they could have in the opening scene. I still don’t understand the purpose of
that opening scene; people criticize the Rise bookend with Jessica, but at
least the relationship between Jessica and her cousin parallels the sisterly
bond at the core of Rise. 2013’s opening shows a grieving father set his Deadite
daughter on fire, and the main plot has David so devoted to his Deadite sister
that he basically gives his life to bring her back. Those don’t have anything
to do with each other outside of both having Deadites.
Mia, herself, is a good
character, but if the intent was to restore the agency to Cheryl (probably a
necessary thing to do in a modern remake), don’t have the tree still assault
her and then spend the entire second act disallowing the real Mia from being a
character with agency, just to rush her into a boss fight at the end. Her
initial possession is supposed to reflect her drug withdrawal symptoms, and
that is a really neat setup that kind of justifies the cabin excursion, but
they drop it almost immediately because what the film wants to be is the
scariest, bloodiest film ever that uses the most blood ever. She still finds
strength to overcome the Big Bad of the film, but I cannot say for sure that
her sobriety journey ties into that fight. She was a Deadite but became clean
for want of a better word, and the way she defeats the baddest Deadite of all
is by ripping off her own hand and grabbing a chainsaw. That mirrors Ash, but
Ash is only debatably canon to the events of this film, so we have to compare
her post Deadite behavior with her Deadite behavior, which, in both cases, was
self-mutilation that enabled her to hurt the person or persons nearest to her.
Again, that is a really cool metaphor for drug abuse, but I do not think the
film carried it through properly.
Similarly, Natalie and
Olivia are basically nothing characters, David cannot handle the Ash shaped
spotlight, and, for the entire second act, I am rooting for Eric not to die of
his wounds because he’s the guy carrying the movie. I respect a lot of the authorial
intent as I understand it; my issues are just with the execution. If anyone can
explain what I am missing about the film (or if Evil Dead Burn gives me a
newfound appreciation for 2013), I would appreciate it. I want to like this
movie and have defended it in the past.
#4
The difficulty I have in
ranking franchise installments, especially franchises as esoteric as Evil Dead,
is that my “favorites list” and the “worst to best films list” are distinct and
often entirely separate orders. Army of Darkness appeals so much to me based on
the nostalgia I have for Jason And The Argonauts, The Magic Sword and The Three
Stooges, but it does not fare very well on the criteria I use to analyze most
films. That said, as a comedy bordering on genre parody, it has one of the best
possible excuses for some of its leaps in logic. Though the performances are
not great, I think that the slow(er) progression of Sheila and Arthur into
their Linda and Scotty archetypes makes them better fleshed out characters than
most of the cast of 2013 just starting out as an expy of the original character
and dying. The different Deadite rules make sense in context, since this is
technically the prophesied final battle set in a time where Deadites were
powerful and plentiful enough to take on the civilized world.
This is the most iconic
version of Ash’s character, but unless you try to analyze the increasing
wackiness as part of his character progression, it just comes off as abrupt. It
also kind of retrospectively deals further damage to something in Evil Dead 2.
Just from The Evil Dead, I buy the love Ash has for Linda, and I have argued
that the montage at the beginning of Evil Dead 2 is not good enough to replace
that for the context of his love being so pure that it temporarily brings him
back from being a Deadite. Including another montage in the story where Ash
moves on proves my point that the montage is not sufficient. Writing it all
out, less of my complaints were justifiable than I initially could think of,
and that is why this is 4th and not 5th, but it might even have some further
upward mobility next time I do a ranking like this. Since I have also only
recently seen one of the many cuts of this movie, I will probably also have to
find the alternate versions and see if any of those fix my remaining issues with
it.
#3
This might seem like
heresy, but I have bumped Evil Dead 2 very low here. I still respect it a lot
for the marriage of terrifying horror and goofy physical comedy, this is the
film I show people to get them into the franchise, and I think it is easily Ash’s
best film for showing off Bruce Campbell’s range and sheer acting ability.
Henrietta, along with Cheryl, is the ideal kind of Deadite performance and
makeup, and I give Henrietta an edge over Cheryl. Aside from those two though,
I think the characters are largely a downgrade in acting and writing from the
original.
This may be an area where
we have to agree to disagree, but I do not think Annie is anything more than a
prop in the plot to go between her love interests’ arms and do what the plot
needs her to do. If you watch Within The Woods, the scenes of possessed Bruce
Campbell are reproduced towards the end of Evil Dead 2, and they are done
better, but I lack the investment in Annie that I have in Ellen during that
short. In the past, I have had a more positive view on her character, and I
hope that I can recapture that by noticing some kind of nuance. In any case,
aside from her, the other characters are Jake and Bobby Joe, who are certainly
memorable, but not exactly important enough to rival Scotty or Cheryl. And Ed
Getley, despite having a great Deadite form, seems like barely a character to
me. (Of course, I understand that the tradeoff for this underdeveloped cast is
the Bruce Campbell one-man show that dominates the first half, and I would not
trade that for a better cast.)
The biggest reason it is
this low, however, is because I think Professor Knowby’s ghost showing up and
being able to influence the plot in the peak of Deadite infestation is either a
plot hole or the sloppiest worldbuilding in the entire franchise. Pending
another rewatch, I do not think Raimi and Tapert considered what they were
doing by setting that precedent and then never following up on it again. Demons
existing already do not necessitate ghosts, but if ghosts are also real and
have some degree of power, the stakes already change considerably.
#2
I contemplated putting
Evil Dead Rise at the very top of this list, because it is the most polished of
these films. It looks and sounds the sleekest, while remembering the core
aspects of the franchise that 2013 forgot. If you want the Deadites to symbolize
something meaningful to the main character, family is an important theme across
the entire movie and not just part of it like the drug abuse in 2013. If you
want a different kind of story with the same old kind of Deadites (down to
chanting “Dead by dawn”), the Deadites being in a high rise trying to
infiltrate a room instead of being trapped in a cellar trying to get out should
suffice for you, and, front and center in the marketing, Ellie is a Henrietta-level
Deadite performance but with the Cheryl-type personal connection to the lead.
Also, and this is more for the worldbuilding, not only are these Deadites the
most relentless they’ve been since Evil Dead 2, but in the film, you can hear
Ash somehow time displaced to 1923 trying to stop their initial discovery, so
this still has relevance to the old Evil Dead, just bringing it into a new era.
Though this film made a lot of money, it has been popular to criticize
it.
Many of the most
prevalent complaints surround the lead character Beth, and I do not really
understand why. While I would not have brought out the chainsaw so soon, her
level of damage taken and personal stake in the plot is as good as Ash’s in The
Evil Dead, so anyone saying she didn’t earn the chainsaw or doesn’t fit into
the movie is being a little silly. Still, I agree that the chainsaw is more of
a film 2 thing, and Beth’s struggle is only at first film Ash difficulty since
she doesn’t even stop the curse. (That’s why I gave the chainsaw a pass in
2013; it seems to be drawing from all three earlier films for Mia and not just
the first by the end.) Beth and Kassie contribute to the theme of motherhood by
contrasting The Deadite Marauder’s antitheme, and if you thought that the
Deadites stole the show, that happens a lot actually; it does not make the
theme less coherent. I have a lot more intrigue in seeing Beth pop up again
than I do for Mia, because she still has that underdog quality that Ash had
going from the first film into the second and the second into the third. Also,
about half of the female characters in this franchise have been rather
underdeveloped; having an archetype for a lead that ties into the central theme
while not “outdoing” Ash is a net positive.
So, why did I not put it
at number one? Though the story is similarly slow and constrained to the first
film, I think that the directing style and building of tension is a bit more
effective in the original film. Across the first two films, I feel like I have
been in that cabin with Ash, feeling the fear in each of those rooms, but the high-rise
apartment is just an apartment. Outside of two rooms that get some Deadite
encounters, I am more filling in the gaps of what I know apartment buildings to
be like than I am experiencing the atmosphere through each room if that makes
sense. I don’t know how they could have improved on that, but the creative team
restored the Deadites so well, so there is still a chance that Evil Dead Burn
could have the edge over the original that this film was missing. There is also
a possibility that further rewatches will burn away the trepidation I have for
ranking Rise higher; at the very least, it has pretty much everything I would
want out of an Evil Dead film.
#1
The Evil Dead is an
earnest classic, and, as I write this, I want to watch it again, in part to
make absolutely sure I am describing it accurately and partially just because I
think it genuinely works as a film. Though the acting is less than ideal even from
Bruce Campbell, the characters have a friendly rapport and chemistry that fills
in the gaps of their writing and elevates their pre Deadite scenes. As the
first film in this franchise showing off these unique camera angles and
creature designs, the film also reads as hungry to prove something. At the same
time, I also think Ash would not be as special if he started out his Army of
Darkness self. He is a more reserved kid, barely involved in the action, that
barely manages to win, still gets possessed at the end of the movie, gets
Deadited next film again, can’t even kill his own hand and can barely bring
himself to do what has to be done to his friends or self. There’s a genuine
tension there in the first film that persists even if you know about the plot
armor, and I think that is part of my problem with David in 2013. He carries
himself with a swagger throughout the movie, and the plot plays out close
enough to the original that even though he dies, you know he’s safe for so long
that the film needs Eric to look so close to death for you to care about the
proceedings. There is more that I will probably want to say about The Evil
Dead, especially after Evil Dead Burn comes out, but I will close with this.
Even though I’m not thrilled about the tree thing, I find it kind of funny to
pretend that the film is implying that what the tree does to Scotty at the end
of the movie is the same thing it did to Cheryl. That clearly wasn’t intended,
but it works as a kind of equalizer in my mind, so I’ll take it.
Here are some links to some previous articles about the Evil Dead franchise:
Plan 9 Crunch: All About Cult Films: The Evil Dead – Fun Gorefest Entertainment!
Plan 9 Crunch: All About Cult Films: Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
