Editorials
The ‘Evil Dead’ Films Ranked From Best To Worst!!!
I wanted to start Evil Dead Month off with a bang and I figured there’d be no better way to do that than to lay my cards out on the table and rank the films in my order of preference. And I’ll say it – I fully expect some of you to hate me after this, because I make one choice that I’m sure 99% of you won’t be down with.
But it all comes from a place of love. You see, I legitimately love this series and this includes the “weaker” installments as well. When I first saw Army Of Darkness in theaters, I had no idea that it was part of a franchise (let alone the one whose Evil Dead 2 print ad scared the hell out of me whenever I opened the paper in grade school). I just went because the TV ads looked cool, and I suppose I should thank the guy at the box office now – because there’s no way my friends and I looked old enough to get in.
Needless to say we loved Army, put two and two together that it was a sequel, and rented Evil Dead 2. That was a revelation. It was like the movies we were trying to make in our backyards, full of energy, weird camera shots and an idiosyncratic tone all its own. The only difference? Evil Dead 2 was amazing and our movies were terrible! Still, I remember the high that I got from watching it. That film connected with me on a level that few films had up until that pint.
So, with that bit of history and context, head inside for my Evil Dead Rankings!!!
4: ARMY OF DARKNESS
I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Army Of Darkness, but I have to admit that I find it to be the weakest of these films. Not that it’s bad, mind you. It isn’t. In fact, for the first couple of reels it’s downright great. It starts off every bit as funny and exciting as some of the best parts of Evil Dead 2 and it handles the wider scope with aplomb. But it always starts to deflate for me at the 27 minute mark, around the time Ash enters the mill. I can’t stand the “little Ashes” for some reason, and even though the idea of a “bad Ash” is interesting in a thematic sense, it’s not explored deeply enough to justify extending this sequence to the 6 or 7 minute mark.
While Army Of Darkness regains its footing towards the end with its massive battle, it never fully learns how to make the medieval setting engage Ash in an interesting way beyond its initial “fish out of water” conceit. Again, I’m not slamming the movie. I’m just saying that what starts out as an “A+” effort eventually ends up as more of a “B-“.
3: DRAG ME TO HELL – HONORARY FRANCHISE MEMBER
Ok, this is where I lose a lot of you guys. You may even hate me for it – but hear me out first. I pretty much consider Drag Me To Hell to be an Evil Dead film. Sure it doesn’t have Ash (nether does the remake, of course) nor does it take place in a cabin (or in a rural environment for that matter). Oh, and it’s PG-13, which automatically makes it suck, right? Not so. This is one of the best horror movies of the last 10 years and it’s certainly one of the most fun. It manages to capture so much of the Evil Dead tone and spirit that it deserves its place as an honorary member of the franchise. Sure, it might not be as fun to watch poor Alison Lohman be tortured as it is to see Bruce Campbell get put through the ringer, but it’s close!
I’d feel guilty about further explaining my feelings on this without quoting Devin Faraci – who made the point first in his review, “You can stop asking Sam Raimi when he’s going to make Evil Dead 4. He’s already done it… once you see a psychic’s assistant get possessed and do that familiar Deadite dance, you’ll know that this film takes place in the same universe where the Necronomicon Ex Mortiis can open the portal between the living and the dead or send a hapless hero back in time. And that universe is the madness inside Sam Raimi’s imagination.”
I agree with every word of that. How about you?
2: THE EVIL DEAD
While it’s not as comedic by any stretch, much of what works in The Evil Dead made its way into Evil Dead 2. It has the same charm, stemming largely from the fact that it’s constructed by a bunch of early 20-somethings who just wanted to make something. A lot of the most inspired music comes from people who didn’t read the instruction manuals for their instruments, and the same could be said for what happened here. Raimi wasn’t a film student, but an English major with an itch. He’d been shooting Super 8 films since childhood and here you get the playful sense of someone operating on gut instinct. While this film’s ability to scare has diminished somewhat with age, it’s never less than a blast to watch.
1: EVIL DEAD 2
The one that made the biggest impression on me as a youth still holds up today. Not only is it a remarkable film but, more often than not, it’s what people have in mind when they refer to the Evil Dead franchise. It has an inspired sense of lunacy that threatens to careen off the rails at any moment, and yet it’s 100% cinematic. While it’s largely a comedy, it has plenty of gore and even manages to raise the stakes for its supporting characters – you actually feel for the likes of Bobby Joe. After making Crimewave, Sam Raimi returned to the franchise with chops to spare. And, of course, there’s Bruce Campbell giving one of the most physically inspired (and surely exhausting) performances in the history of horror.
What about you? How would you rank the Evil Dead films?
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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