Ash vs Evil Dead - Mental, Cliched and Wonderful...

30 years ago, a group of teenagers opened a book, read a few words, as you do, and unleashed lots of really not very nice evil thingies onto the unsuspecting cinema going public.  Filled with glorious tongue in cheek humour, buckets of spurting blood and a handy chainsaw, the Evil Dead series was brilliant.

From the mind of Sam Raimi, who brought us Spiderman, Xena, Drag Me to Hell, Darkman and Oz the Great and Powerful and starring Bruce Campbell, The Evil Dead was deliberately low budget and deliberately over the top.  It blew me away.  It was so easy to get washed away by the tsunami of blood and to lose yourself in the dark humour and snappy one liners.

I loved it.

When I saw the trailer for Ash vs Evil Dead, I really couldn’t wait.  It looked completely mental and took me right back to the glory days of the original film.  At first, I thought it was a new film, not realising it was a series.  It may well have been made obvious in the trailer, but I was probably jumping up and down, clapping my hands at the time so missed it.

It wasn’t until last night, actually watching the show, that I figured my mistake.  A series?  Even better!  So much more evil-slaying to throw at us.

So.  Did it live up to the hype (not necessarily the media hype, but more my own anticipation)?

Hell yes!

From the outset, when Ash pulls on his corset and drops by the bar for a drink and a little more, the show grabs hold of you and drags you along on the ride of your life.  With his friend at the store (reminiscent of Reaper – no bad thing) pushing him to fight the evil, Ash battles grannies as a police officer fights creatures that give Linda Blair a run for her head spinning money.

The only problem with a TV series is you have to wait for a whole week until the next episode and I’m impatient for more.  Ash vs Evil Dead is groovy enough to make sure the wait is worthwhile.

I tweeted, after watching, saying it was ‘over the top, mad, non stop and fairly clichéd’.  I was a little star struck when the official, actual team tweeted me back saying they took offence at being called ‘fairly clichéd’.  They told me they’re ‘completely clichéd’!

Almost every horror film, nowadays, is a cliché.  The stories have been done so many times before, in one form or another, it’s difficult to find something original.

Ash vs Evil Dead really doesn’t care.  It embraces this with aplomb, a word I really don’t think I’ve ever used before.

If you like your horror with an ocean of blood, over the top craziness and laugh out loud humour, make sure you meet up with Ash – you won’t regret it.

Just don’t shake his hand.