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‘Evil Dead’ Continues Forth Because Ash Never Learns….
Evil Dead fans rejoiced when Starz announced they had ordered a second season of Sam Raimi’s “Ash vs Evil Dead,” the continuation of Ash’s Evil Dead story that previously left off with the 1992 Army of Darkness.
Now, a third of the way through the first season, executive producer Craig DiGregorio is teasing plans for the return of Ash and friends in 2016.
“We’re writing, and then we’re going to film it in the first and second quarter of next year,” he tells io9. “Then Starz is going to air it sometime later next year.”
When asked if the inaugural season is going to wrap up the story with the Necronomicon, he revealed that the Evil Dead franchise could go on indefinitely because Ash, played by Bruce Campbell, never seems to learn his lesson.
“The first season wraps up everything and it also wraps up nothing. Or rather, it does wrap up something, but it also leaves something else much more open-ended,” explains DiGregorio. “It’s hard to comment on that—it’s Evil Dead, so you’re never going to be done with the book, necessarily. But I guess if I were to think of it a certain way, it’s all about this character, Ash, and does he ever truly learn? Can he get out of his own way? That’s the question that we’re talking about more than anything else.
“He’s more a reluctant hero than an actual hero,” he continues. “And he’s never had a real relationship where he’s cared about someone. The first season is about him starting to care about Pablo and Kelly, his sidekicks, and treating them as his family. Toward the end of the season, there are some decisions that Ash has to make which either show he’s grown three percent as a person and can have relationships with people, or maybe didn’t grow at all. So we’ll see.”
“Ash vs Evil Dead” continues this Saturday with Episode 104, ‘Brujo.’
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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