All 5 Evil Dead movies rated “Evil Dead Rise”

From Sam Raimi’s original duology and “Army of Darkness” to Fede Álvarez’s 2013 reboot and Lee Cronin’s new “Evil Dead Rise,” this is the Evil Dead ranking.

Ranking of Evil Dead movies: "Evil Dead" (2013), "Evil is dead" "Evil Dead Rise," "Evil Dead II," and "Army of Darkness"

(Clockwise from bottom left): “Evil Dead” (2013), “The Evil Dead,” “Evil Dead Rise,” “Evil Dead II” and “Army of Darkness”

Courtesy of the Everett Collection

There’s a kind of shaggy glory to Evil Dead: Sam Raimi’s demonic scare film series born out of the writer/director’s triumphant 1981 indie horror marvel. Starring childhood friend Bruce Campbell, it was filmed in the wilds of Tennessee on almost no budget. Raimi’s Necronomicon (a.k.a. Book of the Dead) and the flesh-ripping Deadites — also known as the original film’s title, “The Evil Dead” — created a formula for four more films with immeasurable skin-peeling, tendon-popping, and chainsaw effects. – revitalizing pop culture as we know it.

In the first film, last guy Ash Williams (Campbell), his sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker), and friends Scott (Richard DeManincor) and Shelly (Theresa Tilly) head to a remote cabin. . A cursed book and tape summons a demonic presence that slowly begins to feast on the souls of the hapless travelers one by one. It was an unusual but surprisingly effective affair: enough to catapult Ash, the Deadites and Raimi to endless genre fame and set a pattern worth repeating four more times.

“Evil Dead II” (also known as “Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn”) thrilled midnight moviegoers in 1987, when the success of Raimi’s directorial debut earned him financial backing from an impressed producer and resulted in one of cinema’s biggest films. horror comedies. The increased budget allowed Raimi to burn through the beats of the first film at a blistering pace (a strange requirement of the convoluted IP dispute, which means the duology doesn’t make sense as a continuous timeline) and create an action-packed film. expansion that includes the most popular elements of the series.

Critically, this includes the first utterance of last guy Ash Williams’ catchphrase (“Groovy!”) and the supernatural time-jump jab that allowed 1992’s utterly silly second sequel, Army of Darkness, to be set in the Middle Ages . Times. (The movie was supposed to be called “Medieval Dead” until one of the completely annoying executive marketing decisions apparently killed that idea.)

Writer/director Fede Álvarez, co-writer Rodo Sayagues, and scream queen Jane Levy rebooted the series hard in 2013, then a decade later it paired with Lee Cronin’s newly released splashy “Evil Dead Rise.” All five Evil Dead chapters are ranked here, except for “Ash vs. “Evil Dead” TV series.

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