Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Ash vs Evil Dead: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie Review

The Evil is back. But is it better than ever?

Reviewed by Martin Liebman August 20, 2016

What was the old rumor? Ash vs. Freddy vs. Jason? Was Michael supposed to be in there somewhere? Whomever he was to battle, the star of the Evil Dead Trilogy was long anticipated to return to the screen to bring his brand of trademark humor and undead-killing heroics back into the open arms of franchise fans, Horror buffs, and gore hounds. Few anticipated he would return like this, more than thirty years after his first Dead adventure and on the small screen, which in the decades since The Evil Dead debuted has become a seriously legitimate format for storytelling depth and creativity that, at its best, rivals the big screen in every way possible. With the first two films in the Evil Dead franchise more or less two sides of the same coin and the third a more audience friendly Horror-Comedy time travel flick, the TV show's focus is exclusively on Ash's dealings with the deadites in the modern world, but they don't care. The possessed and inhabited are the possessed and the inhabited, and they're dangerous in medieval times, 1981, or 2016. Ash vs. Evil Dead is every bit as gory as the first two films. It's also a fair bit more open yet still mostly focused and able to maintain many of the same attributes that made the franchise one of the more successful, and with almost unmatched staying power, in genre history.

Slice and dice!

Ash (Bruce Campbell) is still haunted by, but decades removed from, the horrors of his youth: his run-ins with the evil dead. He's long grown accustomed to life without his right hand and uses his rosewood replacement -- faking tales of long-past heroics that aren't as gruesome or unbelievable as the truth -- to pick up women. One such woman wants to hear some poetry before she jumps in the sack. In the stupor of a bad high, he reads from the Necronomicon and unleashes a new wave of evil on the world. Big mistake, and he wants no part of it. He heads off to work, long removed from employ at S-Mart but still working dead-end retail store jobs, to gather his last paycheck and make a run for wherever the deadites won't find him. But when the action comes to him, he reluctantly pairs with a couple of much younger co-workers, Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo), and resumes his battles against the most frightening evil the world has ever seen.

Ash vs. Evil Dead plays through a budget many times larger than that of the original film, which remains one of the all-time great low-rent success stories in movie history. The show is much more polished, in most ways, at least, while trying its best to hearken back to the originals. Spiritually, it's mostly a success. Texturally, not so much. With the wider window and time to fill of a TV show -- albeit one built on only ten episodes that average around 30 minutes each, most of them less -- and source material that's fairly narrow in need, it's inevitable that the TV show doesn't come close to matching all of the original films' inherent qualities. That's not even to mention the decades that have passed since and the new, practically unavoidable standards for making material like this. Gone is the gritty, grainy film texture, here replaced by fairly noisy digital (see video below). Some practical special effects appear throughout the season, and there's plenty of blood spilled -- the screen is all but saturated in just about every episode -- but there's also a fair amount of cheesy mid-grade CGI that doesn't mesh at all with the series, either on TV or back to the films which just felt sticky, gooey, utterly and tangibly gross and gruesome, which is a lot of what made the classics work so well. It's definitely Evil Dead at its core, but it never quite feels right when it's all said and done.

Even as the series necessarily ventures well beyond that cursed cabin, it still maintains a fairly dark atmosphere mixed with Bruce Campbell's trademark humor and habitation of the handless hero. Newcomer sidekicks Pablo Bolivar and Kelly Maxwell, both thrust into active deadite combat duty and subjected to untold horrors, quirks, quips, and other things that go bump in the night (and want to go bump, in Pablo's case), make for perfectly acceptable second-level players in the bigger game of life and death. Their growth through the season, next to Ash's relative stability as the chainsaw wielding, shotgun blasting humorist hero, makes for an interesting juxtaposition, particularly as the show allows them greater opportunity to chew the material that's not afforded to characters in the movies. Sam Raimi returns to direct episode one, easily the season's best, most atmospheric, and true to the series' roots. Later episodes, particularly through a rather repetitive middle stretch, feel more like they're playing out in neutral as the wash-rinse-repeat game of "hack the possessed" plays out. Things take a positive uptick as the action shifts to a familiar place in the final few episodes and the show gets back to the nitty-gritty sort of Evil Dead fans know and love.

Ash vs Evil Dead: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ash vs. Evil Dead: The Complete First Season offers a mostly impressive 1080p transfer, excellent, even, in many instances. The digitally photographed show -- radically different from the gritty, filmed Evil Dead pictures on which the show is based -- is very well detailed, though a bit smooth. Very lightly smudgy shots appear throughout, though they're never excessive or linger too long. Source noise is heavy at times, a swirling field that's the image's single biggest detractor and eyesore. Otherwise, it's a very good presentation. Detailing is very strong. The digital source manages to reveal very fine textural nuances with ease, particularly faces and clothing and smaller support elements. The flesh-covered tome looks terrific, with tangible ridges and lines that give it a seriously demented look that the image captures and presents with ease. Dusty old corners, worn wooden surfaces, odds and ends around Ash's trailer, all of it springs to life with tight, nuanced details. Colors are excellent, very neutral but bold and deeply saturated. Red blood is obviously a highlight, be it practical or digital. Black levels hold deep and accurate. Flesh tones appear normal. That noise can be fairly thick and bothersome, but Anchor Bay's presentation is otherwise slick and enjoyable.

Ash vs Evil Dead: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ash vs. Evil Dead: The Complete First Season features one of the most enjoyably, and precisely, aggressive soundtracks out there. The Dolby TrueHD 7.1 presentation delivers an endless supply subwoofer-frenzied, surround-happy goodness, all while maintaining faultless clarity and playing with an honest delivery that never betrays the material or feels over-indulged for the sake of throwing sound into the stage. Music is energetic, wide, immersive through all four back channels, and all the while never stumbles by losing any clarity throughout the range, from piercing highs to the deepest lows. The classic Evil Dead sound of the evil pushing through the woods is back, and the sensation instantly fills the stage and packs in plenty of bass in support. The low is really something else throughout the season. It hits remarkably hard. It's arguably, and maybe even scientifically, one of the top ten most dominant, but clean and effortless, bottom end booms ever on Blu-ray. It shakes the foundation but does so gracefully, not just rattling and rocking for the sake of it but offering a finely supportive, almost cartoony, but expertly balanced sensation that must be heard -- and felt -- to be believed. This track will put any subwoofer through its paces, and then some. Action scenes are more than that, though. Surround usage is constant and seamless. Chaos spills through the stage with a natural flow and feel. Sounds remain identifiable and detailed even in the pitch of the bloodiest chaos. Shotgun blasts hit extremely hard. Chainsaw revs pierce the stage and slice through flesh with a notable gooey sound. Imaging and directionality are flawless. Rain saturates the entire stage midway through episode two with no gaps or lack of distinct realism. Ash's thoughts wave through the stage in episode five, swirling from speaker to speaker. The only thing that could have made this track any better would be an upgrade to Dolby Atmos. It's a shame Anchor Bay didn't implement such a track, because there are no shortage of opportunities for it absolutely shine. Even at 7.1, this is a reference quality track and easily one of the most purely entertaining listens ever on Blu-ray.

Ash vs Evil Dead: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Ash vs. Evil Dead: The Complete First Season contains audio commentaries on all episodes and additional supplements on disc two. No DVD or digital versions of the show are included.

• Audio Commentaries
• "El Jefe": Creator/Executive Producer/Director Sam Raimi, Co-Executive Producer Ivan Raimi, Executive Producer Bob Tapert, and Executive Producer/Actor Bruce Campbell.
• "Bait": Executive Producer Bob Tapert, Executive Producer/Actor Bruce Campbell, and Actors Dana Delorenzo and Ray Santiago.
• "Books from Beyond": Executive Producer/Actor Bruce Campbell and Actors Dana Delorenzo and Ray Santiago.
• "Brujo": Executive Producer/Actor Bruce Campbell and Actors Dana Delorenzo and Ray Santiago.
• "The Host": Executive Producer/Actor Bruce Campbell and Actors Dana Delorenzo and Ray Santiago.
• "The Killer of Killers": Actors Dana Delorenzo, Jill Marie Jones and Ray Santiago.
• "Fire in the Hole": Actors Dana Delorenzo, Jill Marie Jones and Ray Santiago.
• "Ashes to Ashes": Executive Producer/Actor Bruce Campbell and Actors Dana Delorenzo, Jill Marie Jones and Ray Santiago.
• "Bound in Flesh": Executive Producer/Actor Bruce Campbell and Actors Dana Delorenzo, Lucy Lawless and Ray Santiago.
• "The Dark One": Executive Producer/Actor Bruce Campbell and Actors Dana Delorenzo, Lucy Lawless and Ray Santiago.
• Ash Inside the World (1080p, 15:59): A fun piece that runs through the basics of each episode. The piece examines story, visual effects, gore, Sam Raimi's direction in episode one, making various scenes, anecdotes from the shoot, filmmaking methods, characters and performances, and more.
• How to Kill a Deadite (1080p, 2:31): Bruce Campbell discusses the process of killing, and the piece features a quick look at the weapons and methods necessary to do so.
• Best of Ash (1080p, 1:27): A montage of Campbell's best moments from the season.

Ash vs Evil Dead: The Complete First Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Considering that Evil Dead II is essentially a re-imagining of Evil Dead, will season two of Ash vs. Evil Dead follow suit and more-or-less rework season one? Probably not, but it would be interesting to see if a wider, modern audience would take to it the same way the niche Horror crowd did back in the 80s. Regardless of where season two goes (and season one sets things up rather nicely for some new adventures, though probably with the same old tricks ups its sleeve) it should make for solid TV, particularly if it maintains the quick sub-30 minute runtimes and quirky humor and improves a bit on the storytelling, CGI, and somewhat repetitive actions and happenings. Season one is a lot of fun, despite some flaws. It can't capture the same magic, scares, or texture of the original two films, but it tries its hardest in the modern slicked-up age and, if nothing else, makes it fun to revisit the original "cabin in the woods" with new and old friends alike. Ash vs. Evil Dead: The Complete First Season delivers good video, spectacular audio, and a fair supplemental section, albeit one dominated by commentary tracks. Recommended, though newcomers should go watch the three films first.