Because we love Evil Dead to the core: a retrospective on every installment of the saga launched by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell.
“Hail to the king, baby!” Decades after the shooting of Sam Raimi’s iconic classic, the Evil Dead saga continues to splash across our screens. As always, the editors seize the excuse of ranking to revisit Ash, Mia, and Beth’s adventures. It’s hard to sort films that are all equally exhilarating, with the franchise miraculously free of any weak links. The crew faced off with chainsaws and sawn-off shotguns to strike a compromise that can never truly do justice to the inventiveness of this gore-soaked festival.
Note that the excellent series Ash vs Evil Dead, already widely reviewed on Ecran Large, isn’t part of the lineup, nor the video game or the musical (yes, that exists). This article focuses solely on the feature-length films.
5. Evil Dead Rise
- Release: 2023
- Running time: 1h 37m
Evil Dead Rise isn’t as bad as you’d fear. The director-writer Lee Cronin (The Only Child) handles the mission with solid craftsmanship, delivering in 90 minutes all the expected beats. Moving away from the forest and into an old urban building, he toys with an urban setting never before seen in the saga, and a true claustrophobic lockdown. And by focusing on a family with a double motherhood storyline, he shifts the themes onto new ground. He even Or brings back a touch of that Sam Raimi black humor.
But while Evil Dead Rise is probably not a bad horror film, it’s certainly a mediocre Evil Dead. With its teen characters straight out of a subpar Netflix series, its heavy-handed and underdeveloped themes, supporting roles so flat they register only in two scenes, and a construction that feels utterly artificial (the opening flash-forward), the movie stumbles where its predecessors succeeded: Evil Dead Rise looks like a simple horror movie, mildly routine. It’s even more disappointing that the setting is underutilized, despite the striking photography by Dave Garbett (who also shot Evil Dead (2013) and the Ash vs Evil Dead series).
There’s more flesh and blood than in Scream 2, but at heart it’s the same recipe. Because Evil Dead Rise knows its one big argument is precisely the gore, and it leans into it. Yet even there, it’s a little misfired, thanks to overly digital effects, and above all a plot that circles the same ground so that the tension vanishes as quickly as the heroines’ zest for life. You feel the movie is treading water, and the demons just pose, without recapturing the wild, feral energy that defined the trilogy.
Evil Dead Rise ultimately reads as the antithesis of the Evil Dead (2013) by falling into nearly every trap the remake avoided—and yet trying to revisit a few scenes, only far less effectively.
4. Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness
- Release: 1993
- Running time: 1h 28m
A l’origine, Evil Dead 2 aurait dû raconter les événements de L’Armée des ténèbres, en envoyant Ash en l’an 1300 pour combattre les forces du Mal. Face à l’ambition du projet (et les craintes de Dino de Laurentiis), il a fallu attendre le succès du deuxième volet pour donner suite à son étonnant cliffhanger.
De ce contraste entre cette toile de fond moyenâgeuse et les manières très directes de son héros venu du futur, Evil Dead 3 assume encore plus que son prédécesseur d’être une comédie. Autant dire que le public en a été quelque peu surpris lors de la sortie du long-métrage, et que son rythme global se perd parfois dans l’énergie de ses péripéties. Néanmoins, Raimi pousse dans ses retranchements la dimension cartoonesque de sa saga. Après avoir mutilé et malmené Ash, le corps malléable de Bruce Campbell en vient à se démultiplier, autant avec sa version maléfique qu’avec des excroissances miniatures.
L’Armée des ténèbres en devient justement un film sur l’hybridation, sur le mélange des formes et des matières. Avec sa caméra qui s’accroche aux points de vue et aux angles les plus improbables, Sam Raimi se permet tout, d’une transformation de voiture en machine de guerre à un hommage flamboyant à Ray Harryhausen.
Mais surtout, derrière la comédie et la folie de son univers débridé, il fait d’Ash un vrai anti-héros. D’abord désagréable, menteur et égoïste, le personnage de Bruce Campbell a droit à un véritable arc d’évolution et de rédemption, sans perdre pour autant son côté sale gosse. Pas étonnant que les répliques les plus cultes de L’Armée des ténèbres aient été reprises par la suite pour leur aspect badass un peu kéké, notamment dans la franchise Duke Nukem. C’est parfois un peu foutraque, mais la générosité de cet Evil Dead 3 compense largement ses carences.
3. Evil Dead: The Remake
- Release: 2013
- Running time: 1h 31m
Like any remake, it divided audiences, and its standing over Army of Darkness in the hierarchy might have felt like sacrilege. Yet, ten years after its release, Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead remains one of the most radical American horror films of its time and a near-perfect example of horror subversion.
It had little going for it at first glance: a $17 million remake of a classic that drew its artisanal craft from a lean production, guided by a relatively unknown Uruguayan director, all in earnest and without Bruce Campbell delivering a freewheeling performance. And then what? Yet, it’s precisely this choice to counterpoint Evil Dead 2 and 3 that makes it a bold, uncompromising movie, turning the franchise’s cartoony violence into an apocalyptic gore orgy—and at times, downright epic.
Things lined up. Aaron Morton’s grubby photography, Roque Baños’ masterful score, which uses alarm sounds as well as driving heartbeats (not to mention the tango), and above all, the jaw-dropping on-set gore effects, most of which were practical, have all become reference points in the field… All converge toward nothing less than an experience of absolute horror cinema—a literal bloodbath. Alvarez finds a rotting beauty in the genre’s imagery, a beauty still sought after in American filmmaking.
Rare as it is, even the screenplay participates in this quest for a chemically pure horror mythology, using the theme of withdrawal and the nightmare it can trigger as a pretext to impose a true trip to hell and back on its heroine. Of course, she drags hell with her in a memorable finale, culminating with a chainsaw shot that has become iconic. It elevates Mia and her performer Jane Levy as new icons of the genre… for a single film, unfortunately.
Why Evil Dead is a near-perfect remake.
2. Evil Dead
- Release: 1981
- Running time: 1h 20m
The making of Evil Dead was so rambunctious, so stubborn, so fueled by perseverance, resourcefulness, and passion that it could sit in any self-help guide. If its particularly sadistic plot dumps gallons of fake blood on poor Ash, Evil Dead remains a beautiful inspirational story that began with a shoestring budget of $375,000 (scraped together after a long fundraising push), and ended in Cannes with the blessing of Stephen King and the attention of cinephiles.
That period marked the rise of a cunning, talented filmmaker—and of a horror/fantasy subgenre more generous and unrestrained. In this foundational entry, the director laid the groundwork for a mythology that would be refreshed again and again, as well as a distinctive visual and narrative style that he would go on to cap with Evil Dead 2.
That do-it-yourself approach and the maxim “you work with what you’ve got” extended the shoot to 12 weeks and wasn’t always easy, but it let the filmmaker exploit plenty of technical limits for a look that was unique and groundbreaking at the time. The best examples are the low-to-the-ground tracking shots, where the camera becomes a character to embody and materialize an invisible evil, or the shaky-cam technique that, celebrated on occasion, gives the film its relentless tempo. The team’s experiments and tricks are fascinating anecdotes that justify the hyperbolic praise for the film and its contribution to cinema.
That rejection of stasis, of classic, studio-bound framing, or any sense of conventionalism also gives the screen a frenzied chaos that perfectly mirrors the protagonists’ ordeal. While there are nods to Chuck Jones cartoons in the actors’ physical performances, Evil Dead remains a serious, grounded proposition—still far from the self-awareness and slapstick humor that would define its successor, which often underscores its weaknesses. Nevertheless, if Evil Dead had every reason to fail, Raimi’s command of the material earned it a place among the genre’s enduring classics.
1. Evil Dead 2
- Release: 1987
- Running time: 1h 25m
If Evil Dead 2 has the look of a remake in disguise, it is actually a direct sequel to Raimi’s first effort. The problem: New Line Cinema, holder of the first film’s rights, refused to let the filmmaker reuse any of the earlier footage. That is why the opening recap of Evil Dead 2 isn’t truly a recap, and it trims down the cast to literally thrust Ash into a cartoonish universe.
Regardless of that small hiccup, the story proved Evil Dead 2 isn’t only the saga’s best entry, but also a reinvention of the original that is even more inventive. By merging horror with an unabashed slapstick humor, Raimi reimagined an entire genre with experimental fervor. Beyond its love of rubbery effects and geysers of blood, the filmmaker summons the playful cunning of early cinema—a throwback to its roots and an unabashed willingness to go to extremes.
Ash becomes this battered, meat-puppet of misadventure, shuffled from one caper to the next, forced into self-mutilation and mutations inside the cursed cabin. While Raimi’s camera seems ready to slip into the strangest, most inaccessible corners (notably when he adopts a hand-held point of view), his direction seems to bounce off the limits of the tangible, while torturing his hero like a rag doll.
Evil Dead 2 becomes a masterwork of frenzy, pure kinetic energy (the eye being gouged out), waking the dead and reveling in grotesque humor in the truest sense. The very word itself—centered on the doubling and monstrous hybridization of forms—has roots in medieval art, the very era when Raimi drops Ash into the film’s final moments with no mercy.
It’s hard not to recall Bruce Campbell’s wild-eyed, camera-facing glare as madness takes hold, before Raimi’s improbable tracking shots and the film’s over-the-top camera work lift the burlesque energy to new heights. By approaching a Lovecraftian dimension and the inevitable insanity of characters overwhelmed by their encounter with the supernatural, Evil Dead 2 is as entertaining as it is unnerving.
