The following contains major spoilers for Evil Dead (2013) and Evil Dead Rise (2023).

Of the many horror franchises, few are as creatively violent as The Evil Dead. Sam Raimi’s 1981 original garnered an NC-17 rating for “substantial horror violence and gore” and Stephen King described the low-budget indie as “the most ferociously original horror film of the year.” The film follows Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), his sister, and three friends as they travel to a cabin in the remote woods and accidentally summon demons with an incantation from the Book of the Dead. 

In 2013, Fede Alvarez directed the fourth franchise installation, Evil Dead, a remake/sequel following Mia (Jane Levy), her brother, and three friends in a similarly doomed cabin. Ten years later, the Deadites have returned to the big screen with Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise which tells a stand-alone story about a similar Book of the Dead. Found in the basement of an L.A. high rise, an accidental invocation unleashes demons who set their sights on Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and her three children.

Both films live up to the bloody expectations of the original with extreme gore and upsetting violence, but which is more brutal? To decide, we’ve lined up a series of head to head battles to help us hail to the gory king of this legendary franchise’s second chapter. 

Bloody Braid vs. Blazing Daughter

‘Evil Dead’ (2013)

Both films kick off with particularly violent introductions. Evil Dead begins with a teenage girl wandering the wilderness, begging for help. Jumped from behind, she finds herself bound in a cabin while her father accuses her of killing her mother. As the local townsfolk watch, she transforms into a Deadite and he drops a match in front of her feet. The poor man watches in horror as the flames consume his daughter, still yelling obscenities, then shoots her with a shotgun. 

Evil Dead Rise begins on the dock of a placid lake. Jessica (Anna-Maree Thomas) has taken her boyfriend and friend on this weekend getaway, but seems to have come down with a mysterious illness. When her friend goes to check on her, Jessica yanks on the poor girl’s braid and rips the skin off of her skull. She drags the bloody scalp out to the dock then decapitates her boyfriend with the rough blades of a drone before raising above the water along with the ominous title card. 

Winner: Evil Dead Rise

The opening battle goes to the new kid. Teresa (Mirabai Pease) stumbling onto the dock minus her skin is horrifying and there’s a sick kind of gratification in seeing these annoying characters brutally dispatched. We’re also giving extra bonus points to Checkov’s Drone Blades.

Elevator Invasion vs. Creepy Trees

‘Evil Dead Rise’

The original The Evil Dead contains one of the most infamous scenes in all of horror. The first to become possessed, Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) wanders into the dark woods and is sexually assaulted by twigs and tree branches moving under their own power. Both remakes attempt to recreate this shocking effect, one more faithfully than the other. After crashing her car in a creek, Mia crawls to dry land only to be grabbed by tree roots and vines. They choke her and wrap themselves around her arms and legs while a slimy black root slithers up her leg. We don’t want to think about what happens next. 

Set in a high rise apartment building, Evil Dead Rise includes a creative update of this upsetting scene. After an earthquake, Ellie takes the elevator down to the lobby only to find it dropping in free fall from the thirteenth story. After slamming to the ground, cords from the demolished elevator shaft slowly encircle her appendages and lift her off the ground. They twist and contort her body allowing the demons to enter her. 

Winner: Evil Dead Rise

Again, the updated version takes the prize. Not only is this scene an ingenious use of the urban setting, Ellie’s final position looks incredibly painful. Plus we’re excited to finally see a version of this scene that doesn’t include implied penetration. 

Boiling Bathtub vs. Burning Shower

‘Evil Dead Rise’

It’s perhaps not shocking that neither Mia nor Ellie react well to becoming possessed. They return to their friends and family injured and acting decidedly strange. Mia asks to leave and tells her friends about a monster in the woods, but Ellie begins aggressively cooking eggs then appears to die. Confused and hoping to revive her, Ellie’s sister Beth (Lily Sullivan) and her children prepare an ice bath which only seems to antagonize the demon residing in her body. She flies up to the ceiling and unleashes a powerful scream before collapsing into the now boiling bathtub.

Because Mia is currently suffering from heroin withdrawal, her friends Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) don’t want her to leave the cabin. Frustrated and terrified, she retreats to the bathroom and takes what will hopefully be a calming shower. Unfortunately, the demon possessing her turns the water temperature as high as it will go. Her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) comes to check on her and finds the skin on her face bubbling and scalding under the steaming hot water. 

Winner: Evil Dead

This battle definitely goes to Mia. Ellie’s quip “Mommy’s with the maggots now” probably causes more harm than the bubbling water she falls into. Contrast that with the ultra painful sight of the skin on Mia’s face blistering with third degree burns and we’ve got a clear winner. 

Dueling Geysers of Vomit 

‘Evil Dead’ (2013)

As if the possessions of Mia and Ellie aren’t horrifying enough, both women spread the sinister evil in the most disgusting way possible. After taking a sedative to soothe her burns, Mia returns in full Deadite mode and shoots her brother in the shoulder with a shotgun. She opens her mouth and lets out a scream that seems to channel the rage of hell before tackling Olivia and puking in her face. Ellie has already spread the evil to her daughter Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) leading to her horrific death (more on that later) and her brother Danny (Morgan Davies) has wrapped her body in sheets to keep it from reanimating. While his back is turned in the kitchen, her ghostly form levitates behind him and stabs him with a nearby butcher knife before spewing vomit onto him through the sheet that still covers her face.

Winner: Evil Dead Rise

Though it’s the closest contest yet, we’re giving the edge to Bridget and Danny. The emotional horror of having puke reign down on you minutes after watching a sibling die compounded with the pain of getting attacked with a carving knife would be unimaginable. Adding insult to injury, puke definitely gets in those stab wounds. Even if Danny weren’t about to become a Deadite, he would surely need an aggressive disinfectant. 

Glass Through the Hand vs. Glass Through the Face

‘Evil Dead’ (2013)

Though neither film has shied away from violence in their opening acts, two different shards of glass kick the gore into high gear. After shattering the bathroom mirror with her terrifying scream, Ellie advances on her sister with a long piece of broken glass. Attempting to stab her sister in the face, Beth defends herself and the jagged shard rips straight through the palm of her hand. Though painful and shocking, this wound is nothing compared to what happens in Mia’s cabin. Olivia retreats to the bathroom to wash off Mia’s vomit and begins to feel the effects of the possession. When Eric checks on her a short time later, he finds a fully possessed Olivia hacking into her check with a piece of sharp glass. She’s opened a giant wound from her mouth to her ear. 

Winner: Evil Dead

We don’t want to discount the emotional pain Beth no doubt feels when her sister tries to kill her, but Olivia’s glass is the clear winner. Not only is it incredibly gruesome, but it precedes some of the most horrifying violence of the film. 

Tattoo Needle vs. Syringe

‘Evil Dead Rise’

Olivia’s horrifying face wound is merely a precursor to one of the franchise’s most brutal scenes. As Eric stumbles away in horror, he slips in his friend’s blood and slams his back onto the edge of the toilet. Olivia approaches and stabs him over and over again in the face with a syringe. Bridget suffers a similar wound when her mother, a tattoo artist, takes her buzzing needle and scratches a black line down her cheek. This seems to spread the possession and a later scene shows black ink pouring from Bridget’s mouth, nose, and eyes. 

Winner: Evil Dead

We’re sure it’s horrifying to be attacked by your own mother and were Bridget to survive, she would have a black line on her face to remind her of this trauma for the rest of her life. However, this pales in comparison to the pain and terror of being stabbed in the face multiple times with a syringe. Not only does Eric then have to pulverize Olivia’s head with a piece of a broken toilet, but the sight of him slowly pulling the needle out of his lower eyelid will haunt us for the rest of our lives. 

Scissors vs. Box Cutter 

‘Evil Dead’ (2013)

One of the enduring images from Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead is Deadite Mia slicing into her tongue with a box cutter. Having been trapped in the basement, she lures her brother’s girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) to the trap door and pulls her down the cellar stairs. Spewing obscenities, Mia crawls on top of her and bites the flesh between her thumb and forefinger. Natalie attempts to defend herself with a box cutter, but Mia proves the tiny weapon is no threat. She stops licking Natalie’s leg and runs her tongue over the blade of the box cutter, splitting the tender flesh in two. Ellie suffers a similar wound though hers is not self-inflicted. While trying to strangle her sister, youngest daughter Kassie (Nell Fisher) slides a large pair of sewing scissors across the floor to her dying aunt. Beth stabs her sister in the face, driving one of the blades into Ellie’s nose. The Deadite’s face falls with the black handles protruding from the wound. 

Winner: Evil Dead

Nothing can compare with the sight of Mia slowly splitting her own tongue with an evil smile. As if this weren’t bad enough, she then kisses Natalie and tries to shove her bleeding tongue into the poor girl’s mouth. 

Cheese Grater vs. Carving Knife 

‘Evil Dead’ (2013)

This marquee battle epitomizes the disturbing violence of the franchise’s later installments. Both use innocent kitchen gadgets as horrifying weapons and both occur amidst incredibly upsetting and emotional scenes. Realizing that Bridget has been in the kitchen for a while, Beth goes to check on her injured niece and finds a fully converted Deadite. Bridget is chowing down on glass and we watch as the shards nearly poke through the skin of her neck from the inside. She turns to attack Beth and the two use whatever they can find in the brutal battle. Bridget grabs a box grater and digs it into the back of Beth’s lower leg, slicing off a million tiny pieces of flesh in the process. Chasing after her aunt, Bridget runs straight into her younger sister’s homemade weapon. “Staphne” is a doll head attached to a walking stick with a broken and jagged edge. Designed to be more of a scarecrow, the pointed end penetrates Bridget’s mouth and drives itself all the way through and out the back of her head. 

After Natalie escapes from Mia’s basement kiss, she attempts to wash off the wound from her would-be sister-in-law’s bite. As she squeezes black goo from the tooth marks in her hand, an infection begins to spread up her arm. Hoping to stop the possession in its tracks, Natalie takes a carving knife and begins to cut off her arm. As if the blood spurting into her face weren’t bad enough, Natalie doesn’t quite finish the job. David and Eric find her cradling her arm as the remaining flesh slowly tears apart and the amputated limb drops to the floor. 

Winner: Evil Dead

We have to be honest, given the amount of attention this cheese grater scene has attracted, we were expecting a little more carnage. While the idea of being attacked by the same tool that gives us shredded cheese is truly horrifying, Natalie’s arm slowly ripping itself in two takes the title. 

Hallway Brawl vs. Nail Gun Attack

‘Evil Dead Rise’

Both films include brutal set pieces in which a Deadite takes on a large number of friends and family. Midway through the film, Beth and the children barricade the apartment door against Ellie who roams the hall and calls to her children through the peephole. Filmed with a circular lens, what follows is one of the most shocking and darkly humorous segments of the film. We watch through the tiny peephole as Ellie lays waste to her neighbors, tossing children through the air, ripping out eyeballs with her teeth, and tearing out the throat of the man who tried to save her life just hours ago. 

After cutting off her arm, Natalie goes full Deadite and emerges from the kitchen wielding a nail gun with her remaining arm. She shoots herself several times in the face before peppering Eric and David with nails. The men then have the unpleasant task of pulling nails out of their bodies with Eric in particular prying apart his arm and his chest, now nailed together. But the carnage is just beginning. Natalie viciously beats her boyfriend with a crowbar until Eric shoots her with the nailgun. With metal studs protruding from her face, she advances on Eric and splits his hand in two with the crowbar as he tries to protect himself from her blows. Poised to pulverize his head, David shoots her remaining hand off with the shotgun. She seemingly reeverts to her human persona before dying and allowing the audience to finally catch its breath. 

Winner: Evil Dead

We’ve got to give points to Cronin for the grisly fun of its hallway sequence, but Alvarez takes the win by putting us in the middle of the action. We also have to shout out poor Eric who has been absolutely brutalized throughout the course of this film and keeps returning to save his friends. 

Blood in the Elevator vs. Blood from the Sky

‘Evil Dead’ (2013)

If there’s one thing we expect from an Evil Dead film, it’s buckets of blood and the two latest franchise installments do not disappoint. Finally escaping the apartment, Beth and Kassie make it to the elevator, but notice the switchboard filling with blood as they descend to the lobby. The elevator car fills to the top with the sticky red substance, fully submerging the two in blood. Moments before they both drown, the elevator doors open and spilling hundreds of gallons of blood along with Beth and Kassie who ride the wave halfway down the hall. In the final act of Evil Dead, Mia has been freed from possession and she watches her brother set fire to the cabin with himself inside. She holds out her hand and catches a single drop of blood falling from the sky, a precursor to the incoming deluge. Blood rains from above drenching everything in its path throughout the film’s final scene. 

Winner: Evil Dead

Cronin has described going through 1,717 of blood during production, so much so that they hired an industrial kitchen to create it. While this is impressive, Alvarez’s Evil Dead used an estimated 50,000 gallons of fake blood during the film’s grisly climax and still holds the record for the largest amount of the sticky substance used in a single scene. 

Chipper vs. Chainsaw

‘Evil Dead Rise’

Aside from Bruce Campbell himself, The Evil Dead’s most iconic image is arguably the chainsaw. Original hero Ash first picks up the power tool in the original film and it has since become his signature weapon. Cronin and Alvarez both include chainsaws in their climaxes, but Cronin ups the ante by throwing in a wood-chipper as well. Having finally made it to the parking garage, Kassie and Beth team up to defeat the mutant Deadite monster once and for all. Beth uses a chainsaw to drive the monster into the mouth of the chipper, then cuts into her sister’s head as the humanoid creature is slowly dragged into the large metal teeth. With nothing but Ellie’s face remaining, Beth kicks her still quipping head into the grinder, finally admitting that her sister is gone for good. 

As blood rains from the sky, Mia watches a hideous demon crawl its way up through the blood-soaked ground. With no hope of escape, she hides underneath her brother’s jeep and uses the chainsaw to cut the legs of the demon who then flips the vehicle on its side and pins her to the earth by her hand. With the chainsaw just out of reach and the demon advancing, Mia rips off her trapped hand as the blood rains down from the sky. With her one remaining hand, she jams the chainsaw into the demon’s face and nearly splits its entire body in two. The defeated demon slowly sinks into the bloody ground and presumably back to hell. 

Winner: Evil Dead

The addition of a wood chipper definitely adds to the gore, but the image of Mia standing in a torrent of bright red blood jamming a chainsaw through the face of a monster will definitely be remembered as one of the most brutal and exciting images in the history of horror. 

For those keeping track, the final count is Evil Dead Rise: 3 to Evil Dead: 8. However, what this list really proves is that horror buffs and gore hounds alike will surely be shocked, thrilled, horrified, and delighted with both Alvarez’s and Cronin’s entries in this ferocious franchise.