There are few things on Earth purer than the first Evil Dead. It’s the kind of first movie that so many people dream of making. Just you and your friends getting in the dirt and hurting your poor star by dropping bookcases on his head and covering him in gallons of fake blood. Not to mention, it launches your burgeoning film career, spawns a series of wildly influential cult classics, and makes an icon of its star.
After director Sam Raimi’s time swinging around New York City came to a close, we’ve gotten sporadic updates and sometimes new installments in the Evil Dead franchise. There was that 2013 reboot that no one remembers and three seasons of Ash Vs. The Evil Dead, a pretty great little show that no one ever saw.
Well, the Evil Dead is back, or should we say, the Evil Dead has risen in the upcoming Evil Dead Rise. In what sounds like something between a reboot and a sequel (and very similar to the 2013 movie), Evil Dead Rise moves the mayhem to a city and stars Alyssa Sutherland (Vikings) and Lily Sullivan (Picnic At Hanging Rock), but not Bruce Campbell. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie is going to HBO Max, and it’s unclear if it will be receiving a theatrical release.
Still, the whole team is back, including Robert Tapert and Sam Raimi, both producing, and they’re throwing their support behind the film’s director Lee Cronin (The Hole In The Ground).
“I’m thrilled to bring Evil Dead back to its original home at New Line 40 years after the release of the first film. The company’s history as pioneers of horror speaks for itself,” Sam Raimi said in a statement. “I’m equally excited to be working with Lee Cronin, whose gifts as a storyteller make him the ideal filmmaker to continue the enduring legacy of the franchise.”
Campbell, who isn’t starring but is executive producing, also shared his excitement. “At its core, Evil Dead is about ordinary people overcoming extraordinarily terrifying situations,” he said in a statement. “I can’t wait for Alyssa and Lily to fill the blood-soaked shoes of those who have come before them and carry on that tradition.”
It is a bit disappointing to hear that Campbell’s chainsaw hand or Raimi’s whooshing camera moves won’t appear in this one. But, hey, maybe Ash Vs. The Evil Dead will make its way to HBO soon. Raimi hasn’t directed a feature since 2010’s Oz The Great and Powerful, which really must’ve taken it out of him. Next year, though, he’s making something called Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, a title that would make all the sense in the world to someone in 2010.
59 Comments
I prefer Fede Alvarez’ reboot to the original (but not to the more comedic sequels). And I was surprised when Alvarez didn’t cast Jane Levy again when he made his Lisbeth Salander movie, but perhaps that was for the best.
I love Sam’s Evil Dead (and even more love Evil Dead II, which is my favorite movie of all time) but I respect your preference. Alvarez made his own version of that film and it is extremely effective. Woefully overlooked and a little too much dismissed by horror folks. I don’t know if loyalty to Raimi’s films is the issue or what. Kind of a shame we didn’t get to see his version of a Dead By Dawn.
What was Dead by Dawn supposed to be?
I am also curious. Was he going to go full slapstick like the original? I doubt it, but like I said I am curious.
I don’t know. I always got the impression that he had vague notions but too much time and interest passed. I would have appreciated the same body horror and torture stuff but maybe on a broader scale? Or in an urban setting? (Which may be what Rise is going to do.)
Instead he cast her in the horrible Don’t Breathe.
I thought that movie was pretty great, it did exactly what it set out to do, why didn’t you like it?
Honestly, it’s partly my own fault, due to my unrealistically high expectations coming off of the Evil Dead remake, which I really enjoyed.More to the point: I didn’t find any of the characters sympathetic, which I don’t need, necessarily, but I just found it difficult to care about four people doing crappy things to each other. By the time the baster scene came up, I was done.I did like the setting of the abandoned Detroit suburbs, though.
I don’t need that “someone to root for” thing, just that everybody isn’t totally irredeemable. Thought they did a good job making it clear that Joey (that was her name I think) was resourceful and redeemable. I mean, the characters weren’t as bad as Smokin Aces.
I normally don’t need that, either. I still like Very Bad Things, for example. Don’t ask me why.
here i can help with that: one guy complains and whines and complains about how they’re going to get caught…they finally kill him…one of the other guys immediately begins complaining and whining and complaining that they’re going to get caught
That was very helpful, thank you. 🙂
They definitely leaned too hard into the main cast being real shot heads. Okay, so they steal from people but did they have to trash the fucking place on the way out?
No doubt. But again, I just didn’t find it all that effective as a horror movie or thriller, and the baster scene was just ridiculous.As for your first comment about it being great, all I can say is: Nope nope nope nope nope.
I liked Don’t Breathe, and casting her twice in a row was why I thought Alvarez had established a pattern.
You know those artists, always wanting to break the rules and stray from the pattern.Jane Levy would have been excellent as Lisbeth Salander.
It was odd that in 2018 we got the British Claire Foy as the Swedish Lisbeth Salander and the Swedish Alicia Vikander as the British Lara Croft.
You just blew my mind.
Don’t Breathe is great
Let Ash and his mighty chin rest.
And yes, it was a great TV show that got inexplicably overlooked.
Justice for Kelly.
As a huge, huge fan of the Evil Dead films and universe, I was really conflicted by the TV show. All the horror stuff and the callbacks/world-building with the movie mythology was fantastic. But the fucking “comedy”… Just the dumbest, laziest frat guy bullshit. I think the shitty comedy was a big reason the show ultimately failed. I know it put me off the show quite often. Like I *struggled* to endure episodes and I only got through on love for those films.
I thought it was supposed to be stupid since Ash is basically a 1970s teenager who never grew up. It’s kinda just continuing the tradition of shitting all over Ash in every aspect possible.
Maybe that is how Bruce has come to view Ash, particularly given that he WAS a dumb kid in the 70s when he originated the character. But the idea of “shitting on” him isn’t traditional. Getting bloody, yes. Beaten up, yes. But head stuck in the asshole of a corpse? That’s just really stupid. And the weird womanizing wasn’t *a thing* until Army of Darkness. Most of the square-jawed goofy Hero shtick came out of that movie. At the end of EDII when the knights gather around him he is very much NOT into being a hero. That version of Ash is *fine* but I prefer when he’s just some college kid in over his head. Not the action figure he became.
“I’m in the butt! I’M IN THE BUTT!” didn’t do it for you?!Though my poorly remembered personal favorite was Ash watching some future victims race away from him (he’s often bloody and wielding a chainsaw) and dryly commenting about how “well, guess those kids are dead,” or something similar.
I’m all for it. The reboot and the recent Creepshow episode that sneakily gave us a bit more Evil Dead proved that the franchise can still work without Bruce.
I don’t get it, so this has no relation to the show?I don’t know any of those actresess, maybe they’re really funny, but idk if two gorgeous australian models are a fit to a series known for goofiness and slapstick.
Ugh. Okay, maaaayyyyybe the TV show and Army of Darkness have given the impression that Evil Dead is “goofy”.But it’s not. It’s horror. Evil Dead II started down the path of horror comedy but that universe is HORROR.
Literally everything since the first film has been some flavour of horror comedy. I think it’s pretty fair to say that the series is out of pure horror territory now.
The balance is important and ever since AOD that balance has skewed comic. Dead By Dawn is perfectly both. It’s true you can’t entirely remove the 3 Stooges influence from Sam and Bruce but again it was *balanced*. And Alvarez was very much not comic. Even the show had some real darkness. But it would get undercut by a fart joke or Ash trying to screw everything with a pulse. Again: ugh.
Army of Darkness and everything afterwards is GOOFY HORROR.
Yes I agree, even though there were moments of extreme slapstick, it still retained the atmosphere (barring AOD but it was still there too, just Harryhausened up a bit).
I liked a lot of things about Ash vs. Evil Dead (especially Pablo and Kelly; as much as I have undying love for Bruce Campbell, he was the least interesting part of the show), but…I am not normally squeamish, nor do I find any amount of violence, swearing, nudity or sex off-putting. But for some reason, that show felt like it had a lot of distractingly vulgar moments in it, as if they added in as much swearing and sex and violence as they could just because Starz told them they could do whatever they wanted. And those moments didn’t mesh with everything else that was going on.It also became clear that horror (even cartoonish, jokey horror) is really hard to do in a long-format medium like TV. Something can seem eldritch and horrifying at first, but humans can get used to just about anything: Once you’ve been hanging around eldritch horror for a while (and watched characters escape from it by the skin of their teeth over and over and over), it stops being particularly scary. Supernatural worked because (for the most part) it was about the boys confronting and defeating different threats in different situations each week; Ash was (at least in the first season and a half that I watched) about a single threat that kept getting temporarily defeated or stalled, and then was back the next week.
As much as I agree with you re: Pablo & Kelly being so fucking fantastic, but Bruce Campbell killed it with the slapstick gore often on that show. The morgue scene is one of the most baffling, hilarious scenes I’ve seen in a while.
The Morgue is still one of my favorite TV moments of the 2010s. Honestly I’d argue the show peaked with it.
I would point to the morgue scene as a very big example of why I agree with dirtside. Diffrent strokes and all that, and all due respect to the FX talent, I fucking HATED that scene. Just the most (imo) juvenile, fratboy kind of grossout nonsense. Which is a shame because there was some very effective grim horror in that second season.Overall I ended up having a love/hate with the show. Basically any time it took the horror seriously I was on board. And any time it was… “funny”… I wanted the show to end that second. I think Evil Dead II is the only successful mix of horror and humor to come from that universe. Army of Darkness has its fans but I think by that point Bruce was too fond of taking the piss out of the character. Evil Dead II Ash is still Die Hard John McClane. By Army of Darkness he’s Live Free or Die Hard McClane.
I think I just enjoy Evil Dead as a whole trilogy- it does great, atmospheric horror one moment and goofy camera shots and gross-out humour the next.
I have to say it was the fight at the sperm bank…that shit was just completely bonkers.
Stan Against Evil was better, the gore was more restrained and the writing was like 100x better and more funny.
Better? Nah…different, but definitely not better. Stan Against Evil was more like Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers for adults, which was still fun.
Definitely better. The writing and humor were way more on point than ED.
“Stan Against Evil was more like Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers for adults”I believe you’re thinking more of the newer Netflix Voltron series? I don’t remember a team of people in speed suits and helmets that piloted mechs which combined to form a big robot…?
I was talking about the monsters; everything from the effects to the way there was a random baddie every week screamed “early-90’s Power Rangers” to me…which wasn’t a bad thing, necessarily.Ash was pretty dark and gruesome, with high-end special effects and production values, where Stan was more-or-less a B-grade parody of horror tropes. Sure, the writing was excellent, and I loved the cast (I’ll never say no to John C. McGinley), but it was purely comedic; at no point in Stan Against Evil did I ever experience that existential dread I felt at times during Ash vs. Evil Dead.It’s like comparing apples to oranges.
Stan Against Evil was more like Army of Darkness Evil Dead, which is more my speed.
It also became clear that horror (even cartoonish, jokey horror) is really hard to do in a long-format medium like TV.I generally agree, but as a counterpoint: do you feel like comic books published on a monthly to bi-monthly basis count as as a long-format medium? Because if so, B.P.R.D. is probably the only story I’ve seen somehow get that tone right, where the aldritch horrors become increasingly terrifying, unfathomable, and unstoppable in a predestined unraveling that the protagonists have more difficulty struggling against simply to survive as the story progresses (several small victories but a general sense that humanity must inevitably lose).
It probably helps that the comic book format allows for them to publish completely independent tangents to set up some history and lore the main story could pull out whenever it worked with the story (looking at you Sledgehammer 44 and Lobster Johnson).
The first season was actually written as the follow up movie to AoD that got stretched into a season. It’s why it feels so much tighter and more effective than S2 or S3. The problem ultimately came back to it being on Starz where nobody could find it or chase it down. Had Netflix optioned it I think we would have seen 4-5 seasons pumped out quickly and let Bruce retire on a bigger pile of cash.
Im with you. Loved it, but yes, sometimes it felt crass for the sake of being crass, which made it feel cheap
The reboot is an entirely different beast and that actually made me like it more than I might have otherwise. It’s like when someone covers your favorite song. If they stick too close to the original it kinda feels pointless. The reboot is much more torture-y and body horror-y, which isn’t everyone’s cuppa. I normally am not into that as much but I really dug it. Kinda unfortunate that it got overlooked.
Kelly sincerely congratulates all the characters attached to this who are not her
She will not fuck them with bullets out of semi respect.
Thankfully, we’ll see Kelly and Pablo again in the upcoming Evil Dead video game that looks a lot like Left4Dead with an Evil Dead makeover.
I need that game in my life and I didn’t know it was a possibility until this very moment.
‘Lily Sullivan’ sounds like Alyssa Sutherland had to give a fake name for some reason, but panicked and gave a name that was practically her own anyway.
If this gets made and Campbell is alive during the shooting of it I can assure everyone that there is a 100% chance that Ash will at least cameo.
Probably as an evil version of himself that has to be brutily dispatched in some horrific fashion by the new protaganists, I suspect.I’m pretty okay with this.
Well, it sounds like everyone is getting paid, so that’s nice.
I remember the 2013 reboot. It was great.
Do we really need a movie without Campbell in this series? We tried that with the reboot, it didn’t quite fail but it wasn’t anything to call home about. This is one of those series that works because Raimi and Campbell made it work. Without them it’s just another gorefest and no heart.
The Jane Levy movie was surprisingly good, and really remarkable that it managed to be so effective just two years after Cabin in the Woods (which I love) could have overmeta-ed the entire thing.Ash v. Evil Dead was outstanding. Talk about delivering exactly what it was supposed to. The Morgue scene (mentioned elsewhere in the comments here) was exquisite.What I am not getting from this announcement is: which of these two is this a continuation of, because the tones could not be more different at this point.
So is this a follow up to the Evil Dead remake or Ash vs. Evil Dead or a reboot of the reboot?
I was at a small con with Bruce Campbell as GOH in 1994, and the audience was pretty evenly split between ED fans and Brisco fans, and the two groups were having NOTHING to do with each other.It was pretty funny.
Oh, and Bruce is totally charming and sweet IRL. Very patient and kind.