How Evil Dead Survived Without Ash Williams, and Why It Needs a New Hero

Mike

Horror franchises have always suffered from the same problem: What happens when the face of the franchise moves on? In the case of A Nightmare on Elm Street, we’ve always heard someone say it: You can’t have Freddy Krueger without Robert Englund. Many will point to the not-so-great A Nightmare on Elm Street remake to prove their point. But the Evil Dead franchise had a completely different problem. And wouldn’t you know it? They solved it in a completely different way.

Across the three Evil Dead movies that didn’t feature Ash Williams as the lead – Evil Dead (2013), Evil Dead Rise, and Evil Dead Burn – the franchise has grossed roughly $317 million worldwide. All three were also generally well received by critics, although Evil Dead Burn has proven more divisive than its predecessors. But how did they pull that off without the face and chin of the franchise? Can they keep it up much longer? Or did Evil Dead Burn prove that, in the immortal words of Bonnie Tyler on the Footloose soundtrack, “I need a hero”?

Let’s take a look at how Evil Dead has survived without Ash and why it needs a new hero.

Ash Williams was never supposed to be the face of Evil Dead

One thing is for sure: Ash Williams just isn’t walking through that door. Bruce Campbell has made it clear that he is done playing Ash Williams, whether that’s in a new movie, a television series, or an animated project. He’s ready to close the book on that part of his career as an actor. But to understand the future, sometimes you have to go back to the past.

When Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and producer Robert Tapert pulled together their resources to make the first Evil Dead, they weren’t thinking about building a cinematic universe. They were trying to make a horror movie. Ash wasn’t originally the swashbuckling, wisecracking hero we came to know. In the first movie, he’s just an ordinary dude. In fact, he seems like one of the least likely heroes in the room. Ashley evolved into Ash before our very eyes.

By Evil Dead II, Raimi, Campbell, and Tapert realized something hilarious about watching this guy get relentlessly tormented: They could build an entire character around it. Ash’s entire journey is basically one of those days when your car won’t start, your clothes look like shit, and your boss yells at you to hit the bricks and beat it because you’re fired. Only with Deadites, dismemberment, and the occasional inconvenience of time travel.

It was insanely relatable how the universe just seemed to hate this guy. Then, when Ash became defiant in the face of all that misery, he became believably heroic in his own completely ridiculous way. He also became more arrogant, horny, petty, and frequently incompetent.

All of that amounted to someone who was unique and extremely entertaining. By the end of Army of Darkness, there was no one else in horror quite like Ash Williams. And that was the problem.

Evil Dead proved Ash didn’t have to come back

Sam Raimi eventually moved on to the Spider-Man franchise and a slew of other projects. Campbell built his own acting career, and Tapert continued producing. Fans, meanwhile, kept asking the same question: Where the hell is Evil Dead 4?

When Fede Álvarez’s Evil Dead arrived in 2013, the movie was initially viewed as a remake, although it was never quite that simple. Álvarez wasn’t trying to replace Ash Williams. Recasting him wasn’t even really an option. Everyone seemed to recognize what a terrible idea that would be. You can replace the actor behind Jason Voorhees’ or Michael Myers’ mask and, to varying degrees, get away with it. You can even recast Laurie Strode, as the Halloween franchise demonstrated. But Bruce Campbell as Ash? That’s different. He is one of a kind.

So Evil Dead kept the Book of the Dead, the demonic possession, and the mutilation, but stripped away much of the humor and slapstick comedy along with its hero. The result was a shockingly nasty movie that took everyone by surprise. Every nook and cranny that used to be filled by Ash Williams was replaced with even more blood, guts, and gruesome set pieces. People cut their faces with broken glass, puke into each other’s mouths, and stick needles into eyeballs. This shit was wild.

And then something crazy happened. Even with the darker tone, the Evil Dead feeling somehow remained. The violence was so over-the-top that the pendulum could swing from depravity all the way back to laughter. Just a very different kind of laughter. Let’s not pretend The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II didn’t have their own gross-out moments. But by increasing the shock factor and changing the tone of the horror, Álvarez proved that Evil Dead could still feel like Evil Dead without Ash. And he gave us Mia.

Mia proved the franchise could have a new hero

Jane Levy’s Mia wasn’t Ash 2.0 by any means, and that’s exactly why she worked. A recovering heroin addict brought to a remote cabin for an intervention, Mia had one thing in common with Ash: The universe seemed to hate her, too. Through a trial by fire, hand dismemberment, and loads of blood, Mia became a full-on heroine in her own right.

There is a multiverse out there where the franchise followed her story into the future. Álvarez actually began writing a sequel that would have teamed Mia up with Ash. Instead, Ash vs Evil Dead happened, bringing Raimi and Campbell back into the fold. That series was eventually canceled after three seasons, despite being well received by critics and fans. Campbell later officially retired Ash, closing the door on the character’s return while remaining involved with the franchise as a producer.

The important thing, though, was that Evil Dead had already proven the concept could survive without him.

Evil Dead Rise found another way forward

After Ash vs Evil Dead ended, there were discussions about continuing the franchise with characters such as Pablo and Kelly or potentially returning to Mia. But, as is often the case with Evil Dead, what seems like it should obviously come next is usually not the thing that actually comes next.

In 2019, Sam Raimi saw Lee Cronin’s debut feature, The Hole in the Ground, and was impressed enough to meet with the filmmaker about possibly working together. Cronin eventually pitched him on an idea for a new Evil Dead movie: What if, instead of a group of people walking unexpectedly into a big old pile of evil, that evil came to their doorstep? And what if the cabin in the woods was replaced by a high-rise apartment building? That became Evil Dead Rise.

With Ash retired and an Álvarez sequel looking less and less likely, Raimi and Tapert decided to take the path of the unknown. They could let talented filmmakers cut their teeth on the franchise and prove what they could do with their own unique versions of the property. Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise became the blueprint for that approach. Perhaps the most important thing Cronin introduced was the idea that there wasn’t necessarily one single Book of the Dead. Army of Darkness had already shown three different books when Ash was trying to retrieve the Necronomicon. Raimi had used one. Álvarez used another. Cronin used the third. Suddenly, the franchise didn’t have to strain itself explaining how every movie connected to the last one. There were multiple Books of the Dead out there, waiting to unleash hell on whoever crossed their paths.

After eight months of filming, a COVID lockdown, and 6,500 liters of blood, Evil Dead Rise was in the can. The movie opened with a killer set piece that mixed the tone of the original films with the nastiness of Álvarez’s movie. The Kandarian demons were up to the same fucked-up hijinks, but it was clear that this iteration was continuing the nasty, modern approach. And it worked.

Who was the hero of Evil Dead Rise?

This is where the franchise’s current problem started to become a little more obvious. The most memorable character in Evil Dead Rise is undoubtedly Alyssa Sutherland’s Ellie. But she’s not the hero, she’s a hot Deadite. (Sorry. Not sorry.)

That leaves Lily Sullivan’s Beth, who does a great job and absolutely qualifies as a Final Girl. But she’s more of a standard horror survivor than a character who immediately feels like someone the franchise could build around. She does get to deliver the “come get some” line and use a chainsaw by the end, though. I could see the franchise catching up with Beth in the future and letting her grow in the same way Ash did.

Evil Dead Rise still proved there was plenty of life left in the franchise. The movie made $147 million worldwide and was well received by critics, demonstrating that audiences were willing to follow the Deadites into yet another new setting with another new cast. But we were still lacking that singular character to root for.

And then came Evil Dead Burn.

Evil Dead Burn took the franchise even further into the darkness

A year after Evil Dead Rise, Evil Dead Burn was announced after Raimi was impressed with Sébastien Vaniček’s French spider horror movie Infested. Vaniček was attracted to the idea of working with Raimi and Ghost House Pictures, but he also liked that they didn’t hand him a preassembled package and tell him what his Evil Dead movie had to be. They asked him what his Evil Dead movie would look like if he could make it on his own terms.

Vaniček brought in his Infested co-writer Florent Bernard, and they began working through ideas. Their big addition was the idea that the Evil Dead movies weren’t just about death. They were about love, too. Ash tried to save his girlfriend. Mia’s brother tried to save her. The family in Evil Dead Rise tried to save each other. So Burn would be about the death of love.

That gave us Alice, played by Souheila Yacoub, whose husband Will has died. She’s technically supposed to be mourning him, except he was a huge abusive shit, so mourning him gets a little complicated. Her in-laws also have a very different memory of the man. Then the Deadites arrive.

Vaniček talked a big game when it came to the horrors of Evil Dead Burn. He wanted audiences to feel tested. He wanted them to hurt. He wanted to put so much meanness into the movie that he’d never want to make another horror movie again. He knew he wasn’t going to top the blood levels of the previous movies, but he wanted to make the meanest Evil Dead movie ever made. In a franchise where a tree has, well, you know, that’s a pretty big statement.

And he delivered on the gore. A Deadite takes a shot of hot wax. A dishwasher becomes a torture device. A car headrest gets impaled into a skull and slowly pulled back out. There are beheadings, fingers being slammed in car doors, and all manner of other bodily atrocities. Edgar, played by Erroll Shand, stabs the family dog to death with a fork. He repeatedly shoots himself in the head in front of the family. He makes out with his wife while blood and other nasty fluids exchange between their mouths. It’s gross.

But if you were looking for the gleeful gross-outs that could provoke laughter, or really any semblance of humor, that was largely sacrificed. Vaniček wanted the audience to feel the brutality. And that’s where the problem becomes unavoidable.

Evil Dead Burn has plenty of Deadites, but not enough personality

I’ll just say this now: I don’t agree with everything I’m about to say about Burn. This is all hearsay. The opening of Burn is a good time. It lets us know the movie is going to be brutal while continuing the franchise tradition of opening set pieces that shoot for the moon. The deaths and gore are absolutely in line with what we’ve come to expect from the series after Army of Darkness. But Burn is also the first movie in this modern run that really feels like it’s missing something fundamental.

Before the movie’s release, Campbell stepped back from his executive producer role after an early script-development meeting. He told Forbes that he had become tired of arguing about story and structure with a 26-year-old filmmaker and decided it was better for him to take a more hands-off approach. Campbell also identified what he felt was the biggest problem with the recent Evil Dead movies: They were missing the humor.

“You can be scary without being grim,” Campbell said. And then he brought up the most important point of all: The franchise needs a hero you can actually root for. “Ash is an idiot, but you want him to survive.” I couldn’t say it any better myself.

Because when it comes to Alice, there’s almost no personality to speak of beyond her personal trauma. By the end of Burn, she’s using household appliances to murder Deadites and gets a couple of decent lines, but the movie doesn’t give her enough personality to make us desperately want to see her survive. And neither does it give much personality to anyone else. The focus is almost entirely on the Deadites and the gore gags, including a misguided Terminator 2-style chase sequence toward the end that feels far removed from the essence of the franchise.

That’s the missing piece. The franchise has never tried to replace Ash’s exact personality. It shouldn’t. Mia and Beth were at least viable protagonists in their own ways. But Burn reveals what happens when you remove the hero entirely and assume the gore can fill the space. It can’t.

Evil Dead Wrath could be exactly what the franchise needs

Which brings us to the next iteration of the Evil Dead franchise: Evil Dead Wrath. In 2024, while Burn was still ramping up, we learned that The Last Stop in Yuma County director Francis Galluppi was developing another Evil Dead movie and writing the script. And this one could be very different.

Watching The Last Stop in Yuma County won’t necessarily give you the same idea of what you’re getting that Infested gave you with Burn. That’s because Yuma County isn’t even a horror movie. It’s an extremely clever neo-Western crime thriller with multiple twists.

So there’s a lot of curiosity surrounding Wrath. For starters, producer Rob Tapert has revealed that the movie takes place in 1972, making it a prequel to the original The Evil Dead. Tapert says Galluppi’s style is deliberate and “Tarantino-esque,” a major contrast to Vaniček’s much more kinetic approach on Burn. He also says Wrath will have a distinctly warm, tungsten-heavy visual style inspired by the Ektachrome 100 film stock used around that period.

That alone is interesting. Campbell recently complained about the tendency of modern horror movies to look like they were lit like hospital rooms, and said filmmakers should occasionally throw audiences off with pretty and wonderful lighting. So hopefully Wrath will look like an Evil Dead movie that actually has some color in it.

Campbell also has high hopes for Galluppi, praising The Last Stop in Yuma County as smart and well thought out. “That’s half the battle,” Campbell said, “is you go, ‘Okay, we got a filmmaker who has a clue.’”

The humor angle could also be returning. Tapert has revealed that Wrath contains “a lot of coming-of-age sexual hijinks,” something he admitted the Evil Dead universe isn’t exactly known for. He also suggested that the movie could be one of the franchise’s biggest battles with the MPA since the original. Whatever that means, I’m interested.

And more importantly, I’m interested because Wrath seems to understand the most important lesson of Evil Dead: The next movie doesn’t have to look like the previous movie.

Evil Dead needs a new hero, not a new Ash

This is ultimately where we find ourselves. Evil Dead (2013) proved that the franchise could survive in modern filmmaking without Ash Williams. It could still shock audiences, push the gore further, and introduce a new heroine in Mia.

Evil Dead Rise proved that the concept could continue without relying on returning characters at all. You could have a successful Evil Dead movie with nothing more than the Books of the Dead, the Deadites, and the spirit of the previous films.

Evil Dead Burn carried on that tradition and delivered another movie packed with inventive, disgusting violence. But Burn also exposed the missing limb.

The franchise knows how to replace Ash. It just hasn’t figured out how to replace what Ash brought to the table. That’s not the same thing.

Ash was an idiot, but you wanted him to survive. He was arrogant, petty, horny, incompetent, funny, and occasionally badass. He was a character first and a horror icon second. That’s why audiences followed him through three movies and a television series. The modern Evil Dead movies have successfully replaced Ash with different settings, different tones, different filmmakers, different families, different victims, and increasingly creative ways to destroy the human body.

Now they need to replace him with someone we actually want to follow. Maybe that’s Mia or Beth. Maybe it’s someone we haven’t met yet. Maybe it’s hiding somewhere in 1972 with a Book of the Dead waiting to be opened.

Whatever the answer is, Evil Dead is very much alive. It just might need a few tweaks and upgrades here and there. Like cutting your hand off and replacing it with a chainsaw. Metaphorically speaking, of course.