Released: 5 April 2013
Director: Fede Álvarez
Distributor: Sony Pictures Releasing
Budget: $17 million
Stars: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, Elizabeth Blackmore, and Randal Wilson/Rupert Degas

The Plot:
Mia Allen (Levy) is taken to a remote cabin by her friends and estranged brother, David (Fernandez), in hopes of forcing her to go cold turkey with her addiction to heroin. When they discover a macabre book filled with incantations in the morbid cellar, Mia is tormented by ghastly visions that turn out to be all-too-real as an ancient, demonic force seeks to brutalise and possess her and her friends.

The Background:
In 1981, critics and audiences were horrified when The Evil Dead hit cinemas. The result of a collaboration between now-legendary horror director Sam Raimi and his long-time friend Bruce Campbell (as well as friends and family alike), The Evil Dead might have been a low-brow, low-budget splatter-horror film, but it was a surprising critical and commercial hit. After failing to achieve mainstream success, Raimi reunited with Campbell for the bigger and better sequel; Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn (Raimi, 1987) became a cult classic thanks to its over the top gore and iconic action hero, however it was only this latter element that was expanded upon for the third film, Army of Darkness (ibid, 1993), which divided audiences due to its heavier focus on slapstick comedy. While the story continued in videogames and comic books, rumours of a remake or fourth entry circled Hollywood for years; although Campbell declared the project dead in the water in 2007, he later announced that it had found new life with a script that was more a re-imagining of the original film than a straight-up remake. Director Fede Álvarez made his feature-film debut with the remake, which he saw as a continuation of the original film; Álvarez also made the creative decision to focus on practical effects and make-up wherever possible even though it took longer and cost more. Evil Dead proved a surprising success; it made just shy of $100 million at the box office and was met with largely positive reviews that praised the brutal gore and grittier tone, though there were inevitably some who took issue with the debauched content and the absence of Campbell’s memorable protagonist. While these latter criticisms were addressed when Campbell returned for an admittedly awesome three-season spin-off, Sam Raimi teased a continuation of Army of Darkness before finally opting to produce another standalone entry in the franchise rather than a sequel to Evil Dead.

The Review:
I went into great detail in my reviews of the original Evil Dead trilogy about my thoughts on the franchise; while I can respect the hustle and ambition of the first film, and there’s an appeal to Bruce Campbell’s unfiltered bravado in the third, it’s the second one that strikes the perfect tone between horror, action, and comedy that I think works best for the franchise. I’ll always recommend people go to Evil Dead II before the original and had long held the belief that The Evil Dead just hadn’t aged as well as its far superior sequel. There’s often a lot of hatred levelled at remakes, and deservedly so at times, but I would argue horror, of all genres, has fared pretty well whenever it gets a new coat of paint. After seeing the first trailers and getting over the fact that Campbell wouldn’t be returning (and, wisely, wasn’t recast), I remember being really excited for this darker, gritter re-imagining of the first film, an almost comical venture in hindsight that was in desperate need of an update no matter how highly I regard its sequel.

So, no, Ash Williams is not in Evil Dead. It would’ve been a fool’s errand to ask any actor to try and fill those shoes so, instead, we get an all new, young and sexy cast with an entirely different motivation behind isolating themselves in a creepy cabin in the woods. Like the original movie, Evil Dead features five main characters, two of which are brother and sister. Mia and David were close as children but have since grown apart and there’s a fair amount of bad blood between them since David left Mia to care for their dying mother all alone. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Mia has become addicted to heroin and has tried, unsuccessfully, on many occasions to kick the habit. This is the first time that David has been present for her intervention, however, and much of the film’s focus is on him trying to care for her and make amends with her as she struggles with painful withdrawal symptoms, which manifest in the form of horrific visions of a demonic force seeking to devour her. Mia is, at her core, a fundamentally broken character; she has a loving and caring support network but, despite their best efforts, none of her friends truly understand what’s going through and she feels increasingly isolated when her claims to be haunted by a malicious evil are chalked up to her going cold turkey. When they refuse to give in to her desperate demands to leave, adamant to force her to kick her destructive habit once and for all, she tries to leave by herself, only to crash and be confronted by the evil in the forest, which here takes the form of a demonic doppelgänger of herself. Targeting her as the weakest member of the group, the demon possesses her through a far more logical (though no less traumatic) version of the infamous “tree rape” scene and she’s driven to abusing herself and others through increasing violent behaviour.

Mia is cared for by her best friend, Olivia (Lucas), a nurse who’s suffered through Mia’s attempts to kick her habit before and is at her wit’s end with it all, especially after Mia not only previously made the same promises to quit but after legally died after overdosing in the past. Her previous experiences with Mia’s wild hallucinations mean she fails to heed her friend’s scathing warnings about the stench coming from the cellar (which is full of dead cats hanging on meat hooks!) and their impending doom after they discover the Naturom Demonto. It’s all new to David, however, who is so desperate to keep his sister safe out of a sense of guilt that he doesn’t hesitate to take her to safety after discovering her scalding her body in the shower, only to be undone by the rising evil forces in the area. Although he might not seem it, David is closer to Ash than you might think; he’s a “charming liar” who’s been through his fair share of women and has the same terrible taste in neck-wear, and he’s also a sceptic and reluctant hero whose concerns begin and end with Mia and only extend further once the shit really hits the fan. His current girlfriend, Natalie (Blackmore), is a stranger to the group and naturally quite dependant on David as a result; she’s struggles to fit in and is adamant that they should leave once things start to escalate but David remains largely dumbfounded, only really taking things seriously once Mia starts puking up red bile and mutilating her tongue with a box cutter! Poor Natalie ends up the most unfortunate victim of the horrific events at the cabin; driven to near madness by the rotting infection in her arm, she severs it in a daze before attacking her friends in a possessed frenzy and being put out of her misery. Things don’t fare much better for Olivia, who is equally driven to maim her face as per depictions in the Naturom Demonto and ending up little more than a crazed, bloodthirsty demon who needs to be beaten to death.

The demonic force that plagues these characters is significantly altered in Evil Dead; the film opens with a young girl (Phoenix Connolly) suffering from the book’s possession and the lore behind it only escalates from there. Though lacking the monstrous visage on the front cover, the Naturom Demonto is still bound in human flesh and inked in human blood but now contains helpful warnings, written in English, not to read its incantations out loud. It also contains many drawings of the fates the characters later suffer before schoolteacher Eric (Pucci), who makes no bones about chewing David out for his absenteeism and who you’d think would be one of the film’s smarter characters, decides to ignore all these warnings and read from the book, awakening the familiar evil force from the woods. While Eric suffers greatly (and comically) for his foolishness, he also acts as a source of exposition for the events occurring; this time, the book unleashes a disembodied, demonic spirit known as “The Abomination” (Wilson/Degas), which possesses a host and then sets about claiming five souls in order to take physical form in a dirge of rain. The possessed are driven into a violent daze, mutilating themselves and attacking others in a spiteful rage, while Mia cackles and looks on with glee from the cellar. While the only way to stop them is again by bodily dismemberment, the victim’s souls can only be saved from damnation using “purifying” fire, driving grieving fathers to watch their possessed daughters suffer, or a live burial. While David is able to succeed at the latter, the evil force manages to claim enough souls to burst from the ground in terrifying and gore-soaked fashion, though it appears throughout the film as a snarling, animalistic doppelgänger of Mia that delights in her torment and commits the cardinal sin of driving her to bash her and David’s beloved dog Grandpa (Inca) to death with a hammer!

The Nitty-Gritty:
Evil Dead is easily the heaviest of the entire franchise thanks to its focus on addiction; Mia has struggled so badly from the trauma of watching her mother waste away and then die that she turned to heroin for a release and this addiction has caused her nothing but further pain. Her friends, though doubtful, support her attempts to get clean but very much prescribe toe a “tough love” philosophy since she’s sworn off the drugs before and always relapsed. This, as much as anything, proves to be their downfall when they fail to take her claims seriously, resulting in her becoming more and more possessed and them suffering greatly. Another prominent aspect of the film involves David trying to make amends for abandoning Mia; the brother/sister dynamic was barely a thing in The Evil Dead but, here, it’s at the forefront of these characters. It’s because of his guilt and love for her that David tries to get Mia to safety, and that same sense of duty compels him to defend her even when she’s a cackling witch and even sacrifice himself in an attempt to safeguard her, foolish as that decision was. Thus evil Dead thematically and visually has very few links to the previous films; the tilting and rushing camera is back but the cabin and book are both very different. The cabin now has a close link to the two main characters and brings back many painful memories for both Mia and David, the former because of how hard it was to see her mother suffer and the latter because of his guilt and not being there to support them. The location isn’t quite the same and the nature of the possessed and the evil itself are also much different, though you can still spot Ash’s prized Oldsmobile on the grounds and Campbell makes a completely pointless post-credit cameo (I would’ve much preferred he had waved the kids off at the start or even if they’d stumbled upon his corpse).

As ambitious and admittedly impressive as the traditional make-up and practical effects were in the original trilogy, Evil Dead definitely reaps the benefits of modern technology, and from emphasising practical effects throughout its production. The gore on display is truly unsettling; you really feel the brutality of each wound and it’s genuinely sickening seeing Natalie’s arm drop to the floor with a wet squelch. Indeed, the movie really excels is in taking the concept and really treating it seriously; there’s very little humour in Evil Dead and the evil force is far more malevolent than playful, though elements of this latter characterisation can still be found when the possessed Mia spitefully barks at her friends. Instead, the focus is on brutal and unashamed gore; that girl is absolutely roasted in the opening sequence, Mia’s skin bubbles from the searing-hot water, and she sicks up a spew of blood bile onto Olivia, who is ten compelled by the book (and the evil force) to carve open her face with a shard of glass. Poor Natalie gets assaulted by the possessed Mia in the cellar in a disturbingly sexual way before receiving an infectious bite to her hand and being compelled to saw the diseased limb off with an electric knife in a far more gruesome scene than any of Ash’s struggles with his own infected appendage. She’s then driven to attack her friends with a nail gun, only to end up losing her other limb to a shotgun blast and bleeding out on the cabin floor! And that’s before we even touch upon Mia scalding herself, a demonic root forcing itself way down her throat, and slicing into her tongue with a box cutter! Of all the characters, it’s Eric who suffers the most abuse, however. This bespectacled dumbass sure as hell can take a licking and keep on ticking; he slips on a piece of Olivia’s skin, landing on the toilet as he falls, before being brutalised by repeated stabs to the face by a needle, riddled with nails, and ending up with his arm being bludgeoned by the possessed Natalie and a bloodied and beaten mess courtesy of her crowbar attack, and yet he still keeps breathing!

In comparison, Mia gets off quite lightly; she doesn’t end up having her head bashed in with a piece of ceramic and all of the injuries and ailments she suffers while possessed magically disappear after she spontaneously returns to life following David’s effort to purify her with a live burial, though she makes up for this in grisly fashion in the last act of the movie. With all of their friends dead or springing to unlife as violent and crazed demons, and with the book proving to be indestructible, David is forced to step up and protect Mia despite his best, most futile efforts to lie to himself about her condition. He ventures into the cellar to confront her and is manhandled in comical fashion by her crazed attack; it’s only thanks to one last gasp of life from Eric that David is able to bundle Mia up and bury her alive, purging her of the evil’s malicious influence and then immediately jump-starting her heart with a jerry-rigged defibrillator that he stabs haphazardly into her chest! Though this works, Eric’s possessed corpse attacks him and David is forced to sacrifice himself to keep Mia safe, setting the cabin (and himself) alight with a small explosion. This, however, proves to be the final sacrifice needed to bring the Abomination back to life; the skies literally pour blood and the creature, a twisted and demonic mirror of Mia, claws its way out of the ground in a recreation of the original film’s iconic poster. It attacks Mia with a ravenous malice scalding her skin with the lightest touch; Mia’s desperate attempts to hide and fight back also mirror Ash’s panicked escape from the unseen evil, but this finale proves easily the most unsettling sequence in the entire franchise thus far thanks to actually being able to see the blood-drenched demon as it scrambles after its prey. Although Mia severs the Abomination’s legs with a chainsaw, the gnarled demon overturns David’s truck and crushes Mia’s left wrist! Desperate and in agony, Mia has no choice but to tear her wrist free! Considering the film already showed a severed limb, I had no idea this was going to happen at the time and, even now, it’s absolutely brutal to watch! However, it’s a fantastic character moment for Mia as she finally takes charge and attacks her demons, given horrific physical form, to put an end to her misery by thrusting the stump into the chainsaw’s handle, and sawing through the Abomination’s head in a crazy fury! Defeated, the creature sinks into the ground and the blood rain promptly stops, leaving Mia a dishevelled and traumatised mess as she wanders off for help, the Naturom Demonto left forgotten and very much intact…

The Summary:
I remember being stunned by Evil Dead when I first watched it. Although a long-time fan of the franchise, even I would admit that the only one of the original trilogy I really enjoyed and highly rated was the second one, with the first having aged poorly and the third being too comical for my tastes. Thus, I was excited to see a gritty, no-nonsense modern take on the concept and Evil Dead certainly brought the horror back to this cult franchise! While it’s true that the film isn’t as immediately iconic without its smart-mouthed action hero, no actor could really fill Bruce Campbell’s boots and the cast we have is surprisingly strong for a horror film. Mia’s struggles with addiction and the impact it’s had on her friends is violent, tragic, and palpable, even more so for David, who is burdened by guilt at having been absent during his mother’s illness and Mia’s suffering. Of them all, Eric proved the most exasperating character; he’s constantly giving David a hard time (and rightfully so) and stupidly reads from the book despite clear warnings not to, but he make sup for it being enduring some truly horrific abuse once the shit hits the fan! And that’s what really makes Evil Dead a standout entry for me and one of the top horror remakes; it takes the source material seriously, pays homage to the originals by reconfiguring some of their most memorable moments into a gory new context, and expands on the lore in ways that are both familiar and unique to this incarnation. The film is worth the price of admission for its unrelenting, sickening gore but it proves to be a visually stunning and ominously engaging, spiteful horror that makes no apologies for its content and proudly showcases some truly disturbing moments as if in defiance of a slew of poorly-regarded PG-13 horror productions. As much as I enjoyed the spin-off TV show, it never fails to disappoint me that we never got a follow-up to the remake; it made money and proved popular but, sadly, we never got to see Ash and Mia team up as chainsaw buddies, but luckily we can also return to this gritty, unrelentingly brutal film whenever we want a good taste of visceral horror!

My Rating:

Fantastic

What did you think to Evil Dead? Where would you rate it compared to other entries in the franchise? Were you disappointed by Ash and Bruce Campbell’s absence? What did you think to the new characters and the depiction of addition? Were you impressed by the film’s unrelenting gore and effects or is it a little too much for you? What did you think to the changes made to the lore and the depiction of the Abomination? Were you disappointed that we never got a follow-up to this film? What are some of your favourite remakes? Whatever your think about Evil Dead and its franchise, feel free to leave a comment below or on my social media.

Released: 19 February 1993
Director: Sam Raimi
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Budget: $11 million
Stars: Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert, Richard Grove, and Ian Abercrombie

The Plot:
Thrust back to medieval times by the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, Ashley “Ash” Williams (Campbell) finds himself the only hope of fending off a veritable army of Deadites, led by his own demonic doppelgänger (also Campbell).

The Background:
In 1981, up-and-coming director Sam Raimi and long-time collaborator Bruce Campbell brought together friends and family alike to produce one of the most controversial splatter-horror films of all time, The Evil Dead. Despite regular on-set mishaps and tensions, the film was surprisingly well-received and, after his mainstream career failed to take off, Raimi returned to the concept six years later for a sequel. Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn (Raimi, 1987) might have been part-remake due to rights issues but it was met with largely positive reviews; its over the top gore led to it becoming a cult horror classic, though it would take another six years before a third instalment would see the light of day. After Darkman (ibid, 1990) proved a modest critical and commercial success, Raimi began developing ideas he’d had for the third film while shooting Evil Dead II, primarily a large-scale medieval piece with a time-displaced Ash. Producer Dino De Laurentiis was still onboard to provide financing for the film, though Raimi and his cohorts still had to fight to get the funds they needed for this larger venture. As ever, production was troubled by difficult conditions; the sweltering heat and Raimi’s penchant for abusing his life-long friend Bruce Campbell, and the gruelling shoot caused issues during the production, to say nothing of the painstaking practical effects work needed to bring the much larger concept to life. Having struggled with the ratings board with his previous Evil Dead films, Raimi purposely set out to make Army of Darkness more a slapstick horror/comedy and toned the gore way down, only to be hit with an unfairly high rating as penance for releasing the previous films independently. Additionally, studio interference saw Raimi’s original vision for a bleak cliff-hanger ending changed to a more hopeful one, and it’s often not clear which version you’re going to be watching when you purchase a copy of the movie. Finally, while Army of Darkness’ $21.5 million box office gross made it a relative success, many have been divided in their opinions on the film; some praised the presentation and effects work, others criticised the slapstick approach. While the film went a long way to further cement Ash as a horror icon and is often seen as a cult classic, it remains a contentious entry in the franchise and its events are often overlooked or outright ignored in subsequent entries (though this is also due to licensing issues).

The Review:
In my reviews of The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, I made it pretty clear that my bias is firmly towards Evil Dead II on being the best of Sam Raimi’s original trilogy. For me, it’s the perfect balance of horror and comedy and really cemented Ash’s character as a reluctant hero who transforms into a horror icon after being put through the wringer by a malevolent force. Evil Dead II set Ash up nicely as a cursed victim forced to see those he loves and cares about either turned into zombie-like Deadites or brutally murdered before his eyes, and constantly haunted by the evil force no matter how hard he fights, and Army of Darkness immediately sets about reminding viewers of this with yet another recap of the previous movie in the opening. This time, it’s narrated by Ash, firmly placing him as the main character and focus of the franchise and this movie, and quickly skims through the events that saw Ash lose his hand and end up being sucked through a vortex to medieval times.

Understandably, given the horror and the trauma that he’s gone through, Ash is pretty tetchy in this film. While it’s nice to get a sense of his life before the horrors of the cabin, seeing him as a dedicated and knowledgeable S-Mart employee, any vestiges of his original bookish demeanour have been completely swept away and replaced with a bitter, antagonistic bravado that sees him openly mouth off to anyone, regardless of their authority or stature. He has, officially, had enough of this shit, basically, and his only concern is finding a way back home; he doesn’t want to be some prophesised hero, he doesn’t want to get involved in the issues between Lord Arthur (Gilbert) and Duke Henry the Red (Grove), and he certainly has no intention of battling the Deadites any more than he has to. Thus, he makes a deal with the Wise Man (Abercrombie) to retrieve the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis to help them turn the tide in their war against the Deadites but on the proviso that the Wise Man uses the book to send him back home, no questions asked. Unfortunately for Ash, life is never that simple; the evil force constantly conspires against him but is only part of the problem in Army of Darkness. Ash’s ego and sense of superiority means he not only expresses his frustration to the masses but also fails to heed the Wise Man’s words; despite being little more than a retail employee, Ash sees himself as their physical and intellectual superior, a façade he maintains even as he’s blundering his way through the movie. This same bravado, brought on after the trauma he’s experienced, causes him just as much grief as any reanimated skeletons as he refuses to listen to proper instructions and ends up raising the titular army of darkness in his haste and selfishness to get back home.

The opening recap once again shows Ash at the cabin with Linda (Bridget Fonda) but skims past her relevance pretty quickly this time around (and even completely omits Annie Knowby (Sarah Berry) from the narrative) to instead focus on Sheila (Davidtz). Since Arthur captured Ash alongside Henry and his men, who killed her brother in battle, Sheila is initially instrumental in condemning Ash to the Deadite pit since he’s assumed to be one of them. Like all of the “primates” in Arthur’s kingdom, Sheila is suitably impressed by Ash’s prowess in battle and his “boomstick” and quickly reverses her ill will towards him, which he initially callously dismisses since he’s busy living up the rewards of being hailed a hero. Although he’s as gruff and flippant towards her as he is to the other “primitives”, Ash finally gets the chance to get laid after being impressed by her spirited nature, but bashfully spurns her when given the choice between returning home or helping her and her people fight off the evil he’s unleashed, with even Sheila branding Ash a coward for this choice. Although it seems as though Sheila is doomed to become little more than a damsel in distress when she’s swept away by a Deadite gargoyle, she actually assumes the role of secondary antagonist after being brought to “Evil Ash” and transformed into a Bride of Frankenstein-esque (Elsa Lanchester) witch by his kiss. Her kidnapping proves to be just the kick up the ass Ash needs to get his shit together, but her demonic visage almost proves his undoing in the finale when she causes his supped-up Oldsmobile to crash and delights in tormenting his body and his heart.

This is the first Evil Dead production to have a large cast of characters, and all of them react to Ash in different ways. Initially, Ash is met with suspicion by Arthur, though Ash is far from impressed by either Arthur or Henry and, once he escapes the pit, Ash immediately punches Arthur out and humiliates him. Although flippant towards Henry, especially as he was in chains when they met, Ash earns the duke’s respect after allowing him and his men to go free, which pays off dividends in the finale. It’s thanks to the Wise Man, who has knowledge of Ash’s greater destiny from his familiarity with the Necronomicon, that Ash is able to win the awe of the crowd and begrudgingly quest for the book. However, he loses the respect of the masses after dooming them all to death and destruction through his ineptitude and, while Arthur and the Wise Man are honour-bound to uphold their end of the bargain, they condemn him for his foolishness, but are soon relying on his surprising scientific acumen and military tactics to defend the castle. Ash’s eventual leadership skills and engineering abilities are so impressive that even Arthur is forced to offer his begrudging respect. Though a proud and seemingly cruel king, one who’s not only ore than happy to toss his prisoners into his Deadite pit to the amusement of the braying crowd but also freely executes any escapees with a crossbow, Arthur’s first priority is the safety of his people. He’s waged bitter war against Henry the Red for some time but is driven to find and protect the Necronomicon not to use it against his enemy, but to put an end to the Deadites that have infested his land. Still, the rivalry between Arthur and Henry runs so deep that, at first, it seems as though the duke has condemned his enemies to their fate; however, thanks to Ash’s rallying cry in a deleted scene, Henry and his men arrive just in the nick of time to help turn the tide against the invading Deadites and peace is finally fostered between the two as a result.

Naturally, the evil force is back at work in Army of Darkness; somehow, it’s already been unleashed across the land, despite the Necronomicon being hidden in an ominous cemetery. The demonic forces it unleashes and possesses are now freely referred to as Deadites and attack people openly, causing much fear and panic in the lands, and the evil force continues to be both possessed individuals and an invisible, roaring spirit that relentlessly pursues Ash. However, Ash is wise to its tricks this time around; he knows when it’s playing possum, when to fight, and when to flee when it’s nearby, though he’s far more capable in a one-on-one situation than when chased by the invisible force. For the first time, the evil force is given stable and consistent physical form in this movie; previously, it was simply limited to cackling, monstrous possessed bodies but Army of Darkness sees Ash once again battle against himself when the force manifests through his reflection in scenes that recall his experiences at the cabin in the second film. The result of this is Ash literally (and bloodlessly) splitting into two after his evil twin sprouts from his body; despite being a morally grey character, the more recognisably “Good” Ash triumphs over his evil twin and leaves him for dead, only for “Evil Ash” to return to life as a rotting, skeletal corpse that acts as the embodiment of the evil force and seeks to conquer the living through the titular army of darkness. Evil Ash gives Campbell more chances to showcase his range, being a maniacal and raving, pirate-like figure that ramps all of Ash’s arrogance and hot-headed bluster up to eleven, taking a possessed Sheila as his bride and digging up an army of the dead to ravage the land. The Necronomicon also gains more personification this time around; there are three books, each capable of biting and attacking Ash when he screws up the magic words, and the Deadites take a number of forms, from gibbering zombies to screeching witches, but is primarily represented by an army of skeletons. The evil force is also far more playful this time around; it’s still spiteful and malicious, but its loquacious and quirky skeletal troops are just as likely to get into slapstick scrapes as they are the skewer their victims.

The Nitty-Gritty:
The Evil Dead films had always been fairly comedic up to this point; even the first, which is easily the grittiest and splatter-horror of the bunch, had its ridiculous moments, but Army of Darkness takes the comedy/horror atmosphere of Evil Dead II and runs with it! Some of this is a little lost on me; the Three Stooges were a bit before my time and I’m not really a fan of their slapstick comedy or repetitive routine, so seeing Ash fend off skeletal limbs as they bonk his nose and box his ears is a little too childish for me. A lot of the comedy is focused on Ash’s 20^th century sensibilities, slang, and technology and the fear, awe, and confusion it inspires in the natives; to these people, Ash’s rudimentary science and bog-standard weaponry are like magic and his bravado is able to impress all the more since they are so enthralled at his ability to defeat the Deadites with his strange weapons. His grouchy demeanour is also a fun source of comedy; he’s far more selfish and outspoken this time around and only undertakes the Wise Man’s quest because he has no other choice to get home. The film also boosts his action hero status up to eleven, gifting him even more memorable one-liners and moments, as well as using his engineering abilities and 20^th century science books to not only fortify the castle defences and turn his beloved Oldsmobile into a bad-ass fighting machine, but also somehow construct a working artificial hand using an armoured gauntlet and the gift of a montage!

Indeed, for me, much of the film is again carried by Bruce Campbell; I may not agree with every decision made to blow Ash’s characterisation so ridiculously out of proportion but there’s no question that, again, this is his show (as evident in the opening titles, which actually call the film Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness). If you enjoyed Ash’s fight against his severed hand in Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness takes that horse and well and truly flogs it to death by having Ash be set upon by cackling, miniature versions of himself using some ambitious, if dodgy, composite effects. These diminutive little gremlins torment Ash, stabbing and tripping and mocking him at every turn and forcing him into more and more comical extremes as he tries to stamp and drown them out. Ash’s character is also expanded upon in ways that would continue to be featured in subsequent adaptations and continuations of the franchise; now a much more self-serving anti-hero, Ash primarily fights for himself and makes no bones about it. He basks in the adulation of the people only to feed his ego and is more than happy to leave them to their fate after unleashing the book’s evil since he’s fed up with all the fighting and everything it’s cost him and just wants to go home. He has a change of heart, of course, but Ash’s hesitant nature literally manifests itself into a separate being in this film and it’s a grey morality that separates “Good” Ash from “Evil” Ash. Evil Ash is more obviously the personification of the evil force that’s been hunting Ash all this time and is bent on the wholesale slaughter and possession of the living, painting him as more obviously “bad”, but it takes a great deal of motivation for Ash to get his shit together and start fighting for something other than his own self-preservation, turning him from a reluctant but bad-ass hero to a flawed braggart who needs to be pushed into defending others.

Thanks to focusing more on bombastic action and wacky, slapstick comedy, blood and gore is all-but-absent from Army of Darkness. While there is an impressive geyser of blood when one of Henry’s men is tossed into Arthur’s Deadite pit, there’s none at all when the recap shows Ash chopping off his hand and even the Deadites are less intimidating, save for the decaying visage of Evil Ash, and more likely to rattle off quips and play fight than tear flesh from bone. However, Army of Darkness raises the titular army from the grave with some remarkable practical effects, puppets, and old school camera techniques in the explosive and overly ambitious finale, which sees Ash forging gunpowder and becoming a symbol for the people to rally behind in the battle against the stop-motion effects, corpse-like costumes, and gibbering puppets used to bring the army of the dead to life. Ash uses his steam-powered Oldsmobile to mow them down using a bladed attachment and, despite being physically outmatched, proves an adaptable, if desperate, brawler, when he clashes swords with Evil Ash. Ash manages to hold both Evil Ash and a Deadite soldier at bay with a surprising deftness before setting him on fire, reducing Evil Ash to another babbling skeleton, and blowing him up using a bag of gunpowder. This restores Sheila to normal and results in victory, but Ash finds himself conflicted; he briefly considers staying in the past, where he can continue to be hailed a hero and even live like a king, but ultimately he decides that he belongs in his own time. The Wise Man finally repays his bravery with a solution to his time displacement; depending on which version of the film you watch, Ash either has to drink five droplets of a special potion or repeat another magic phrase to enter a deep sleep. Either way, he screws up this process once again and either ends up sleeping too long and waking up in a post-apocalyptic future or returns to his mediocre life as an S-Mart employee where he wows his co-workers with his tall tales and continues to fend off the vengeful Deadites (which, incidentally, has always been my preferred ending).

The Summary:
To this day, I struggle with Army of Darkness. It’s certainly the biggest and most ambitious of the original Evil Dead trilogy, with a much larger scope and cast of characters and it really expands upon the lore of the franchise in its own way, but it’s such a jarring genre shift from the last two movies that it just doesn’t always land for me. Ash’s bravado has been ramped up to such an extreme that he’s gone from a quirky and unlikely action/horror hero to a selfish wise-ass who’s both too arrogant and blockheaded to remember some simple words and yet adaptable and knowledgeable enough to craft an artificial hand and a steam-powered quasi-tank using medieval technology. Ash is at his most unlikable here at times, which works in the sense of him setting aside his ego and fighting for something other than himself, and I totally get that he’d be frustrated after everything he’s been through, but it makes him more of a cliché than someone to root for. The film is super toned down compared to the last two, relying on slapstick comedy and over the top action rather than gore and horror, and sadly rehashing a lot of the entertaining aspects of Evil Dead II through a watered-down presentation. There are some good aspects, such as the impressive (if overly ambitious) special effects and Bruce Campbell’s charisma, but I’d argue they’re not enough to give this much consideration. While I prefer the “good ending”, it really doesn’t matter which version you watch as the film is barely ever referenced and I can’t say I’m sorry about that. You’re much better off sticking with the cliff-hanger of the last movie and assuming that Ash found his way back using the book rather than sitting through this, unless you have little kids who want to get into horror but aren’t quite ready to see the gory content of the first two movies.

My Rating:

Could Be Better

Are you a fan of Army of Darkness? Which ending do you prefer? What did you think to Ash’s characterisation as an arrogant blowhard? Did you enjoy the shift towards slapstick comedy or do you prefer the gory content of the other films? What did you think to Evil Ash and the Deadite army? Did you enjoy the special effects used in the film or do you find it too dated and cringe-worthy? Would you like to see Army of Darkness get more recognition or do you think it’s better off ignored? Whatever your thoughts on Army of Darkness and the Evil Dead franchise, drop a comment below or on my social media and be sure to check out my other Evil Dead content.