Ranking All the Evil Dead Movies from She-Bitch to Groovy
If you go down to the woods tonight, you’re in for a bloody surprise. Not a nice picnic or a romantic stroll, but a demonic force that possesses your body, turns your friends into killers, and ruins your Airbnb rating forever. With a cabin, a cursed book, and a lot of fake blood, Sam Raimi and a group of lunatics made horror history.
Back in 1980, The Evil Dead shocked censors and audiences alike, earning a place on the UK’s video nasty list and becoming an underground sensation. But from those grubby VHS beginnings, it grew into one of horror’s most beloved franchises. We’re talking sequels, a remake, a reboot, a TV show, and video games. And at the heart of it all, a man with a chainsaw for a hand and a very short fuse.
Today, we open the Necronomicon one more time and rank all the Evil Dead films from worst to grooviest. These are the stories of pain, possession, and people who just wanted a quiet weekend in the woods.
Note: We’re only including the movies. The TV show is brilliant, but that’s another list for another time.
5. Evil Dead Rise
It took a long while for this one to surface, nearly a decade after the 2013 remake, but in 2023 we finally got Evil Dead Rise. Lee Cronin was handed the keys to the Deadite kingdom and decided to take things in a very different direction. Gone is the cabin in the woods. Now we’re stuck in a run-down Los Angeles apartment building, a million miles away from the creaky old forest lodge that gave us so many nightmares. It’s cramped, grimy, and full of regret.
The setup is solid enough. A mother, her two kids, and their cool rock chick aunt find themselves face to face with the Book of the Dead after a vinyl recording summons the usual horrors. As expected, possession kicks off, blood flies across the screen in tsunami-like amounts, and things get absolutely feral. It’s a nasty, mean-spirited film with some great gore and strong performances, especially Alyssa Sutherland’s wonderfully unhinged Deadite mum. Honestly, the cheese grater alone deserves its own spot in the horror hall of fame.
But here’s the thing. While Rise absolutely delivers on brutality, it just isn’t that fun. The weird balance of camp and chaos that made the others so memorable is missing. It leans so heavily into bleakness that by the end, you feel like you’ve been emotionally mugged. And in a series known for rewatchability, this is the one you probably won’t reach for again anytime soon. Nothing wrong with Evil Dead Rise, but in a franchise this stacked, someone has to come last. Sorry cheese grater.
4. Evil Dead (2013)
Horror fans tend to treat remakes the way Dracula treats garlic — with absolute disgust. And to be fair, they’re usually right. Most are lazy cash-ins dreamt up by studio execs who haven’t had an original idea since 1989. But every now and then, a remake claws its way out of development hell and actually does something right. John Carpenter’s The Thing is the gold standard. Fede Álvarez’s Evil Dead? Surprisingly close.
This 2013 bloodbath takes us back to the infamous cabin in the woods with a group of attractive, emotionally broken twenty-somethings who decide now’s the perfect time for a DIY drug intervention. Because when someone’s going through heroin withdrawal, what they really need is to be isolated in a creepy cabin with zero phone signal and a suspiciously fleshy book wrapped in barbed wire hidden in the basement. (Yes, the cabin has a basement. Don’t ask.)
One reading from the book and bam — demon possession, bodily mutilation, and the kind of gore that makes you question your own life choices. This movie doesn’t just go hard — it goes absolutely feral. There’s a reason it holds the world record for the most fake blood ever used in a film. When it rains blood in the third act, it’s not a metaphor — it literally rains blood. The scares are brutal, the practical effects are top notch, and Jane Levy gives a performance that’s so good, she probably still finds fake nails in her shoes to this day.
So why isn’t it higher? Nostalgia. As great as this is, it doesn’t have the chaotic charm or twisted humour of the originals. It’s a solid, serious horror film that respects its roots while going full throttle into the abyss. A remake done right — just don’t expect many laughs.
3. Army of Darkness
After the absolute chaos of Evil Dead II and its groovy cliffhanger ending, Army of Darkness lands us in the last place you’d expect: medieval bloody Britain. And no, not the grim, mud-covered “historically accurate” version — this one’s full of skeleton armies, witches, flying books, and one-liners sharp enough to cut through steel. Ash (Bruce Campbell in peak chin form) crash lands with his chainsaw, boomstick, and a car that’s nearly out of gas. Time travel’s a bitch.
This third entry in the Evil Dead saga ditches most of the straight horror and leans so hard into slapstick fantasy that you’d be forgiven for thinking the Monty Python lads had a hand in the script — if Monty Python featured geysers of blood, flying demon hags, and an army of Deadite skeletons that look like they’ve escaped a Ray Harryhausen fever dream. Gone are the claustrophobic forests and demonic possession — now it’s castles, knights, and Ash hilariously trying to remember the words “Klaatu Barada Nikto” without accidentally dooming humanity. Spoiler: he fails.
Army of Darkness is loud, silly, endlessly quotable, and an absolute blast. It’s not really horror in the traditional sense, but it’s so uniquely bonkers it couldn’t belong to any other franchise. If you ever meet someone who quotes this film back at you unprompted, don’t hesitate — marry them immediately. “Gimme some sugar, baby.”
2. Evil Dead II
Let’s just get this out of the way: yes, we know Evil Dead II is a classic. Yes, we know many horror fans consider it the pinnacle of the franchise. And yes, it’s bloody brilliant. But on this list, it lands in second place — not because it’s lacking in any way, but simply because the original left a scarier, deeper impression on our traumatised little brains (more on that shortly).
Evil Dead II is a strange beast. Is it a sequel? Is it a remake? Is it a fever dream after bingeing too much Sam Raimi and sugar? The answer is: all of the above. We return to the cabin, to Ash (now fully embracing the leading man role), to the Necronomicon, and to the madness — only this time with more money, better effects, and a healthy dose of Three Stooges-style slapstick. It’s gorier, funnier, and infinitely more quotable. This is the film that gave us the chainsaw-hand. This is the film that made “Groovy” iconic. This is the moment Bruce Campbell became a genre god.
There’s flying eyeballs, possessed limbs, Henrietta in the cellar, and enough demon bile to drown a cow. It’s a glorious, gory ballet of chaos and comedy. But it’s also less scary than the original. And for us, horror still needs to, well… horrify. So while Evil Dead II might be the slicker, louder, more crowd-pleasing sibling — it just doesn’t leave quite the same shadow on the wall. Still, as sequels go, it’s damn near perfect.
1. The Evil Dead
There are horror films that scare you, and then there are horror films that scar you. The Evil Dead did both — and it did them on a budget so tight you could bounce quarters off it. When people talk about no-budget horror done right, this is the blueprint.
Let’s rewind. Picture it: 4am, living room, a bootleg VHS of a movie you’ve only heard about in whispers, supposedly banned for being too violent. You’ve seen the artwork of Freddy, Jason, and Michael on the shelves, and suddenly this forbidden tape appears like it was sent from Satan’s video store. You sneak it into the player, heart racing, and fifteen minutes later you’re so freaked out you hit stop and pretend it never happened… while secretly becoming obsessed. That was The Evil Dead for a whole generation of horror fans — trauma, intrigue, and admiration, all in equal measure.
Sam Raimi’s original film is scrappy, dirty, and soaked in blood — and that’s exactly what makes it terrifying. It doesn’t have the laughs of Evil Dead II or the slapstick of Army of Darkness, but it has dread. Pure, unfiltered, demonic dread. A bunch of young, relatively unknown actors trapped in a rickety cabin in the woods being picked off one by one by invisible demonic forces. Add in tree assaults, possession make-up that looks like it was applied with a spatula, and a camera that moves like it’s being chased by the devil himself — and you’ve got yourself a genre-defining masterpiece.
This is not just the best Evil Dead movie — it is the Evil Dead movie. It’s the reason why horror fans can’t look at a woodshed the same way again. It’s the reason why we flinch every time we hear Latin being read out loud. And it’s the reason a cabin in the woods will never be just a cabin in the woods again. Legendary stuff.
