Fun and Evil Dead in the same breath? Sounds wrong, doesn’t it? Yet, here we are—forty-odd years later, still laughing, screaming, and quoting lines from a franchise that turned demon possession into slapstick theater. Sam Raimi’s cabin-in-the-woods nightmare shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it spun into a cult juggernaut, equal parts splatter and screwball.
At the blood-soaked center of it all, we have Ash Williams, the glue and the gasoline. Ash is Bruce Campbell’s chainsaw-swinging disaster of a hero, who somehow made “groovy” sound like a battle cry. The film series has come a long way from the 1981 original, and it has kept the gonzo charm all through, never playing by anyone’s rules but its own. So, it’s time to settle the eternal debate: which entry stands tall as the king of the deadites?
5. Evil Dead (2013)
Mia (Jane Levy) just wants to kick her drug habit, so she heads to a remote cabin with her brother, his girlfriend, and a couple of friends for support. It should’ve been an intervention with bad coffee and tense silent moments — until the Book of the Dead is opened, the wrong words are spoken aloud, and the demons decide rehab needs more blood.
By 2013, the franchise had gone cold turkey on camp. Fede Álvarez ditches slapstick entirely and turns the Necronomicon into the centerpiece of a ninety–minute endurance test. Every frame feels designed to grind the audience down, making it the bleakest entry in the canon. It’s a reminder (if any was needed) that Evil Dead doesn’t always need a smirk to leave a mark.
4. The Evil Dead (1981)
A creaky cabin. A cursed book. About three gallons of fake blood. That’s how Sam Raimi and a handful of friends turned no budget and sheer imagination into one of horror’s most unlikely game-changers. The Book of the Dead (aka the Necronomicon) makes its bloody debut here, spewing Deadites (people transformed into demons) and fluid from every orifice imaginable. The film’s clunky ferocity became part of its charm and somehow made it sharper than most slick productions of the era. You don’t watch Evil Dead for polish; you watch it for the manic sincerity that barrels right past its own limitations.
But the secret sauce wasn’t in the mix yet. Ash was at this point still just a guy screaming his lungs out in the woods; a far cry from the legend he’d eventually become. 1981’s entry is the sketch before the masterpiece; proof that a demented dream with a Super 8 camera could flip indie horror overnight.
3. Evil Dead Rise (2023)
Beth (Lily Sullivan) shows up at her sister Ellie’s (Alyssa Sutherland) crumbling L.A. apartment looking for a breather. The reunion barely has time to settle before an earthquake rattles the building, unearthing a Necronomicon and some cursed vinyls from the basement. By the time the record plays, demons have a new playground, and the family’s claustrophobic apartment turns into a slaughterhouse.
This one hits the sweet spot between reinvention and tradition. Elevators drown in blood, hallways close in, and a cheese grater carves its way into horror infamy. Maternal grit and fractured family bonds slice through the gore, giving the carnage an emotional edge the franchise hadn’t leaned on before. Turns out, apartment living can be its own kind of nightmare, and Evil Dead Rise proves the horror franchise doesn’t need the woods to stay unhinged.
2. Army of Darkness (1992)
After losing his friends to Deadites and chainsawing off his own possessed hand, Ash gets hurled through a time warp straight into the Middle Ages. Naturally, everyone mistakes him for a prophesied hero, and before long, he’s battling skeleton armies, mispronouncing magic words, and accidentally splitting into Good Ash and Evil Ash. It’s a fish-out-of-water epic with a boomstick strapped on.
This is where Ash becomes the ultimate pulp hero. He spits out lines like “Well hello there, fancy pants” in between chainsaw swings, facing supernatural chaos with the weary sarcasm of a guy who’d rather be on his couch. Raimi dials horror way down and slapstick way up in Army of Darkness, staging a live-action cartoon where skeletons march, quips fly, and cult status is cemented. The wildest swing of the series, and somehow, it hits.
1. Evil Dead II (1987)
Ash is off to a cabin getaway with Linda (Denise Bixler) — but one look at the Necronomicon’s skin-bound cover should’ve screamed Do not touch. The moment those cursed pages are opened, Linda’s a Deadite and the nightmare kicks into overdrive. Reinforcements arrive in the form of four strangers, but the cabin walls close in just the same: corpses cackle, blood geysers, and the woods themselves seem alive.
Raimi throws everything at the screen and somehow, it all sticks. Evil Dead II is unhinged, iconic, and frankly, the reason Evil Dead is more than just another horror series. This isn’t just the best of the bunch, it’s the best, period. Four decades, five films, and one chainsaw later, the Evil Dead franchise still knows how to splatter the screen with style.
If there’s only time for one rewatch, make it Evil Dead II, available to stream on Prime Video.
