Ash Vs Evil Dead Season One Review

I finally got round to watching Ash Vs Evil Dead, I had seen the first two episodes when it first aired but enjoyed them so much I decided to wait until I could binge watch it. After finishing off The Strain as well as a few other non horror things it was time to start watching Ash kill some Deadites.

Trivia – The fact that Ruby’s Kandarian Dagger can sear the flesh of the possessed wasn’t created for the TV series. It is seen doing this in the very first film when Scotty uses it to stab the possessed Shelly in the back and she uncharacteristically reacts in extreme pain for a Deadite. Blood and smoke are then seen pouring out of the mouth of the ornamental skull on the blade’s handle.

Trivia – Sam Raimi originally intended to follow Army of Darkness (1992) with a fourth Evil Dead movie; the plan for which was to follow both the theatrical and director’s cut endings of the film with a film that followed two different timelines simultaneously. The concept was eventually abandoned due to its complex nature.

Trivia – The yellow Oldsmobile Delta 88 that Ash drives is the exact same car used in the original trilogy. It belongs to creator and writer Sam Raimi, and was bought new by his father.

When this show was announced I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, part of me was excited that after all this time we’d see Ashley J. Williams kicking ass again and part of me was thinking God I hope this is good. Well luckily it was better than I ever thought it could be. The half hour format also worried me but it fits really well with the style of the show leading to fast paced gory and funny episodes. It’s like a sitcom filled with gore and jokes that are actually funny.

Ash is a complete loser but can still lie his way into a drunk woman’s panties

The story is set decades after the end of Evil Dead 2, Ash is back from fighting Deadites in that crazy cabin. He’s now exactly as you’d expect a giant loser, he lives in a mobile home and works in a dead end job with ambitions to go nowhere. Still this bring amusement to the show, we all know the reason Ash is missing a hand but he lies to women in bars about how he lost his hand in an effort to get laid. Based on the show this seems to work and it does indeed look like he pulls his fair share of women.

Problem is old Ash likes to have a smoke and in a drugged up haze one day he reads from the Book of the Dead and that never ends well. Que the visions of Deadites and soon he’s being attacked by them in the form of creepy little dolls and the neighbours in his trailer park home attacking him.

Our group come together after the gory murder of some Deadites!

What could have been tricky is introducing characters to share this world with Ash but the show smashes this out of the park. It gives us Pablo (Ray Santiago) Ash’s college at work who just wants to impress the man for some reason he admires, from here Pablo gets his friend the attractive and fiery Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) a job. Her first interaction with Ash is brilliant. These two are a key part to the show in Ash’s fight against the Deadites and they are both acted and written extremely well. I don’t think any of them ever became annoying at all and both helped conquer Ash’s selfish attitude.

With the gang together Ash, Pablo and Kelly head on a journey to try and end the invasion of Deadites, firstly to see a man in a book store to try and translate the Book of the Dead and undo Ash’s stoned mistake. However with this happening so early it’s obvious it’ll go wrong, from their our unlikely trio head back to where it all began in an effort to end the book forever.

Lucy Lawless is amazing at killing Deadites

Along the way Ash is trailed by the magnificent Ruby (Lucy Lawless) who’s intentions are not fully revealed for a while but she has an ability to kill Deadites that is only matched by Ash. Also trailing Ash is a cop Amanda (Jill Marie Jones) who encountered the Deadites and now believes Ash is the man responsible for the kills.

Cop Amanda encounters the Deadites and tries to track down Ash

What ensues is a spare no gore fast paced adventure as the group comes across demons and Deadites all over the place. When I say they spare no gore they really don’t, you can’t help but worry that TV stuff will be tame but this isn’t. We see decapitations, limbs flying everywhere, Deadites cut in half both across the waist and up towards the head, there’s exploding heads everything you could possibly want and then some.

The Good

Everything about this is good from the opening scenes to the first Deadites to the ending it all fits with the Evil Dead mythology. What makes this stand out for me are the comedic elements they’re far better than what I thought they’d be (not that I thought they’d be bad). When this is paired up with a mythology that could quite easily fit with a serious horror film and tons of gore, likable characters then you know it’s going to be special.

I love that they kept the sweeping camera work we saw in the original films, it’s not outdated at all and really adds to the tension and story in certain scenes.

There’s also a slight twist at the end that I didn’t really see coming, I had an idea something was dodgy but I didn’t expect it to play out like it did.

Gore, gore, gore!!!

The Bad

There is none, I really tried but couldn’t think of a single thing that I didn’t like about this. Does the fact that there’s only ten episodes count as a bad thing?

The Brilliant

It’s the gore, the deaths, the Deadites and humans being dispatched of with gallons of blood everywhere. One more thing and I suppose this is to be expected is the nods to the originals, we get to see Ash’s old girlfriend who he killed in the wood shed, the cabin features heavily in the last few episodes and it’s exactly how you’d imagine it being.

This is a must see if you love the Evil Dead films and Ash or even if you’re into gory comedy horror. I highly recommend this and it’s the most enjoyable thing I’ve watched since I started this blog.

Overall Score