The series Evil Dead is one of the world’s icons of 1980s horror cinema. Its protagonist, Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), is part of the genre’s pantheon, while his fans follow each new announcement and news with excitement, even if they don’t always materialize in real productions. For those arriving now, with the release of a new film, keeping track of what was left behind can be a little confusing.
Or not so much, since Demon Death: The Ascension proposes to be something new, with no connection to the universe of previous productions, even if it brings a truckload of references. It is also the second time (or perhaps the third, if we take it literally) that the saga Evil Dead goes through a fresh start, with remakes and chronological messes of the past also serving to reintroduce stories or introduce characters and concepts.
The best order to watch the movies in the series Evil Dead it’s in the release sequence, with one exception, starting with the original, from 1981, following the sequels through the years, the series and the 2013 remake, finally arriving at the recent film that starts it all over again. This, however, is a simplification, which we will discuss in more depth below.
Attention: the text contains some spoilers for previous films in the Evil Dead saga, but not for the most recent one, The Death of the Demon: The Ascension.
One Mind-blowing Night (or two?)
As said, the saga Evil Dead was born in 1981 as a quasi-experimental project by Sam Raimi (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness). After recording short films alongside his brother, Ted Raimi, and Campbell, with whom he is still friends, the troupe gets together to shoot a feature film with penny financing, some unusual ideas and a lot of blood.
Alongside friends, Raimi transforms the hit-and-miss story of a group of teenagers who travel to an isolated cabin in the woods into a festival of demonic possession caused by the accidental reading of the Book of the Dead, based on a recording made by a historian. The Necronomicon, as it is also called, releases an evil that takes the young people one by one, while Ash sees everyone getting lost while fighting for his own survival.
After much word of mouth and smaller screenings, the film gained recognition in 1983, when it was released globally and even reached Brazil with the title used until today, The Demon’s Death. The success generated more than US$ 2.6 million, which, of course, made Raimi and the distributor soon think of a sequel. Now with more resources, the director could also carry forward elements that he left out in the original, which has a more focused tone on terror and its characters.
The second Evil Dead arrived in 1987 and, in Brazil, underwent a title change; skirt The Demon’s Death and entered One Breathtaking Night 2 — some re-releases dropped the numeral. Those who watched both, however, found it strange that the feature was not necessarily a direct sequel, but rather recounted the plot of the original differently in its first arc, moving in a different direction from the second.
Em The Demon’s Death, Ash manages to survive until dawn, after losing all his friends, his girlfriend and his sister; he himself, however, ends up possessed by evil when leaving the abandoned cabin, even though he destroyed the Necronomicon during the fight for his own life. The sequence, however, begins with the protagonist going to the place accompanied only by his girlfriend, Linda, again finding the Book of the Dead and restarting the cycle of possessions with a new reading from a recording.
At the end of the first arc, Ash gets possessed, but manages to break free. He ends up meeting the daughter of the historian responsible for translating the Book of the Dead and fights alongside her and her boyfriend, as well as a couple of local residents. With more details on what happened to the original discoverers of the Necronomicon, Evil Dead 2 ends with an absurd ending in which evil itself takes the form of a giant creature, which attacks the hut while the protagonist tries to reverse the emergence of the demon from millenary new words.
Raimi was never very clear about the chronology of Evil Dead, stating several times that the sequel comes as a continuation of the original, even if it tells its events differently. In the minds of fans, the main theory unites the two features — the original can replace the first arc of One Breathtaking Night 2 and go on from there, with Ash losing his friends and girlfriend, finding new allies, and finally sending evil back to hell.
hugging the joke
The third chapter of that story was released in 1992 and took us to the Middle Ages with another title change; outside, the long one is called Army of Darkness, or “Army of Darkness” in English. The portal opened to send the demon back took Ash with it, with the hero literally falling into King Arthur’s court. There, he discovers he is part of a prophecy; the same evil brought to the present also plagues the past, with an outsider must arrive from the heavens to finish off the possessed.
Em One Breathtaking Night 3, Raimi moves even further away from horror and plays with comedy and slapstick cinema, presenting a feature film that was even shown on open Brazilian television, something that rarely happened with films of the genre. Campbell’s performance shines to the fullest here, turning him into an icon of the segment and bringing some of the classic phrases that are remembered until today.
In exchange for the magic that can bring him back home, Ash agrees to help Arthur, Merlin and his soldiers fight evil, which even includes an evil version of the protagonist. After a great battle, they are successful and the character is finally able to return to his time and work as a department store attendant.
The ending, however, brings a hook to a sequence, with a monster – now known as Deadite – attacking the establishment and indicating that the demon may not have died after all. An alternative ending, left out by Raimi, who considered it too dark, showed Ash waking up 100 years ahead of what he should in an apocalyptic world, after missing the dose of the potion that would take him back, ending up sleeping too much.
Neither plotline nor the other, however, was addressed the next and last time we saw Ash. After more than two decades of waiting and many follow-up projects that never came to nothing, Ash Vs. Evil Dead, a Starz production that finally continued the story of the franchise. Poor and careless, the protagonist left his times as a demon hunter behind for 30 years until, on a drunken night, he ends up reading from the Book of the Dead while trying to impress a woman.
The return of the Deadites places him alongside new allies, such as Ray (Pablo Simon Bolivar) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo), but also agent Amanda (Jill Marie Jones), who hunts him after he is accused of murder, when the first possessions are mistaken for the work of a serial killer. Echoes of the past also return in the form of Ruby (Lucy Lawless, the eternal Xena the Warrior Princess), a demon hunter with some secrets and evil intentions.
Over three seasons, Ash Vs. Evil Dead once again invested in mixing comedy with horror, giving much more emphasis to the first genre. The series also deepened the figure of the protagonist himself, with the right to a reunion with his father, from whom he inherited the good-natured and inconsequential style, and a teenage daughter whose destiny also ends up altered by the Book of the Dead.
Would not be Evil Dead no more bizarre, with the ending of the series, canceled after three years, recovering the memories of the abandoned ending of Nightmare Night 3. After facing a gigantic Deadite and apparently saving the present, Ash wakes up in a post-apocalyptic future where, apparently, he is one of the few living human beings—and a revered warrior.
Once again, we have an unused sequel hook that will likely stay that way. After the cancellation of Ash Vs. Evil Dead, Campbell announced the protagonist’s retirement and an idea that the franchise would follow new directions from then on. Like everything else in this saga, things can change, with later statements showing himself already considering wielding the chainsaw once again. Nothing confirmed for now.
Back to the cabin
Even before the series, however, we had a remake of the first feature. Launched in 2013, The Demon’s Death brought in a new cast of characters and, again, the story of a group of friends who head to an abandoned cabin on a vacation trip. The focus on terror was resumed, with an emphasis on violence and brutality, with dismemberments and shocking scenes that those who watched it certainly did not forget.
The protagonist of the time is Mia Allen (Jane Levy), who recovers from a drug addiction and ends up being the only survivor of the group. The screenplay by Fede Álvarez (The Man in Darkness) set out to tell a new story, set in the present and unrelated to Ash’s saga; even a scene in which the two protagonists would meet was left out in favor of this “independence”.
The word appears in quotation marks because the remake did more than just reference the original features, igniting theories among fans. A current idea is that the evil generated by the Necronomicon can have a cyclical effect, affecting regions and people in different ways, which would explain, for example, the hut still standing after being destroyed in One Breathtaking Night 2. Ash Vs. Evil Deadhowever, did not embrace this idea, without Mia being mentioned once, to the sadness of fans who liked the production and would like to see a continuation.
a new evil
We finally arrive at the Demon Death: The Ascensionwhich premiered in Brazil on April 20, 2023. The story unrelated to the original films, but produced by Campbell and Raimi, takes the horror to the city of Los Angeles, where the liberation of the demons of the Book of the Dead ends up transforming in the misfortune of an already somewhat dysfunctional family, as well as other residents of a crumbling building.
The idea, according to the production duo, is to reintroduce the franchise to new fans and take it in a new direction, with more constant releases and new stories. There is, however, no mention of attempts to connect with the original universe or even the 2013 remake, and while the new feature does not necessarily define that nothing that came before happened, even the book itself has its own and different functioning, indicating that, here, we effectively have a new world to be explored.
The best thing, however, is to watch Demon Death: The Ascension finally, after the original features, the series and the remake, in that order. Although the new version is not connected to them, their concepts are common, which generates a better understanding of this whole curse, as well as giving meaning to several references that appear throughout the entire production.
