The Evil Dead franchise has grown a lot from its humble beginnings: from the independent project of three college students from suburban Michigan, it has expanded to five movies, a three-season television series, video games, comic books, and even a musical stage play. It has spanned five decades and introduced new protagonists, different versions of its evil book, and countless creative ways to become a Deadite, one of the evil dead. In all this media, only one of the movies stands above, exemplifying the tone of all the rest.
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn is the nexus point of all things Evil Dead. Thematically, it is a bridge between the first movie and the rest of the adventures of its hero, Ash Williams, which consist of Army of Darkness and Ash versus the Evil Dead.
The second film carries the horror ambiance of the first movie, but the Three Stooges humor that explodes in Army of Darkness begins to seep in during Dead by Dawn. The first time Ash utters his famous “Groovy,” the franchise moves from pure horror to horror-comedy with a dash of spicy action. While Fede Alvarez’s The Evil Dead (2013) and Evil Dead Rise attempted to adhere to the original movie, Dead by Dawn gave permission for even the scariest sequels to incorporate humor and break the tension.
It’s sad that Bruce Campbell is getting too old to subject himself to the physical strenuousness of playing Ash, because the entire Evil Dead saga really centers around him as The Chosen One Who Fell From the Sky. The Evil Dead and Evil Dead Rise are almost like filler episodes of a series, side adventures that aren’t part of the main plot, because they lack Ash or anyone associated with him.
The vast majority of Evil Dead media is about Ash. He is the star of the video games, of the musical, and of the comics. Campbell can play Ash forever in these formats, and there is even talk of a possible animated series.
As much as the first Evil Dead movie exists and is part of the saga, Ash’s story really begins with Dead by Dawn and the discovery of his destiny and its ties to the Necronomicon. Dead by Dawn even covers the events of Evil Dead by devoting almost half the movie to Ash’s struggles with Linda before the story gets going. Evil Dead is more like a prologue than an episode, and the omission of three of its characters, including Ash’s sister, didn’t affect the story for over thirty years before Cheryl turned back up in Ash versus the Evil Dead season two.
Evil Dead is the original, showcasing the talent and ingenuity of Sam Raimi and the Renaissance Pictures crew. It caught the attention of none other than Stephen King when it was shown at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, prompting the King of Horror to dub it “the most ferociously original horror film of the year.”
Despite its cheap effects, claymation climax, and obvious extras (called The Fake Shemps in tribute to the Three Stooges), it is a genuinely scary movie that established Sam Raimi as a master of horror in his own right. It doesn’t have the humor of the rest of the series, but it goes straight for the scares and succeeds. The more recent films in the franchise owe their roots to the original Evil Dead.
Unfortunately, the very things that make Evil Dead endearing are also the things that rank it below its immediate successor. Dead by Dawn had the quality and budget that Evil Dead lacked, and is twice a retelling of the first movie. It repeats and expands on the events of Ash’s first night in the cabin by condensing them down to only include Linda, and then starts the entire story over again once Annie and her entourage arrive at the cabin. The stage play includes all the characters from the first movie, but is essentially otherwise Dead by Dawn, uniting the two films in a way that makes sense while being sadistically funny via catchy musical numbers.
Army of Darkness continues the story and even borrows a few seconds of footage from Dead by Dawn. It was the most popular movie in the franchise for a while, largely because it was the first to be distributed by a major production company. Universal Pictures handled all the marketing that had previously been the responsibility of Raimi’s limited resources, and got the movie into more theaters than its predecessors had enjoyed.
This required certain concessions: gone once again were all Ash’s companions except Linda, and this time they also took the “evil dead” from the title in an attempt to dissociate Army of Darkness from the other movies (although this may have been a blessing, as Raimi wanted to call the movie The Medieval Dead). For all its popularity, however, Army of Darkness is not the best Evil Dead movie because it still relied upon the backstory provided in Dead by Dawn.
All the Evil Dead movies are worth watching, and the enjoyment of one means you will probably enjoy the entire franchise. There is no wrong order to watch the movies, except that it is helpful to watch all of the first three before watching Ash versus the Evil Dead to familiarize oneself with the characters and setting. The films used and even helped establish some of the best tropes of today’s horror movies, and fans can find something to enjoy in each one.
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn is the glue that holds them all together, making it objectively the best.
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