Sam Raimi's original Evil Dead trilogy is pretty much perfect - a spectacular, maximalist blend of horror, comedy and action that announced the filmmaker and star Bruce Campbell to the world.
The Evil Dead might be the greatest indie horror movie of all time, extracting all the terror and fun possible out of a budget of $375,000. Raimi innovated on this formula with Evil Dead II, which upped the slapstick elements of the previous film and cemented Ash Williams as a horror icon. Army of Darkness flipped the wheel even further, with Raimi developing a medieval adventure comedy where Ash battles the Deadites in a bid to return to the present day.
Although not guided by Raimi, the 2013 Evil Dead from Fede Alvarez was a rip-roaringly good time that upped the body horror and scares, albeit at the expense of some laughs. While not the same beast as the original Evil Dead films, it's still a great entry in the series, and one that has been followed up expertly with Lee Cronin's Evil Dead Rise.
Throw in a fun TV show in Ash vs The Evil Dead, and you're left with probably the most consistently great horror franchise ever created.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
