I think my favorite part of digging into this set was sitting down and rewatching all three seasons of Ash vs Evil Dead, as I haven’t rewatched any of the episodes since they were last on the air, so it almost felt like I was rediscovering the series all over again. I know a lot of fans call Army of Darkness their favorite of the series (and it IS great), but I honestly think Evil Dead II features Campbell’s best performance in the series, and it was fun to fall in love again with the character of Ash Williams with this latest revisit.
Also, as someone who has always been a huge fan of the amped-up special effects in this sequel, they are another highlight of this 4K iteration, as the Rotten Apple Head looks so damn good and so does Henrietta’s makeup. What really struck me about this 4K version of Evil Dead II is how much Peter Deming’s cinematography really shines in this presentation. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the original Evil Dead or anything, but when I go back to this series, I tend to pop in ED2 or Army of Darkness more often than naught.
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I can’t speak to the quality of the last few Blu-ray releases of The Evil Dead and how this 4K presentation compares to those editions, but I can say that this 4K iteration made me feel like I was watching the movie for the first time all over again (also, a lot of the muddiness I remember from some of the night scenes is no longer a factor here).Įvil Dead II is a slightly different story, as I have watched this one a bit more than its predecessor, as its far more outlandish vibes speak more directly to my own horror-loving sensibilities. As I mentioned before, it’s been a while since I really sat down and watched The Evil Dead, and I was blown away by how even with this modern UHD polish, The Evil Dead lost none of its admirably rough edges that make it feel like a movie you discovered on some random Memorex VHS tape at a friend’s sleepover and popped it in the VCR out of sheer curiosity (yes, that is how I first saw the original as a kid).
The lack of Army of Darkness is a bit of a bummer, but I understand that its exclusion is due to rights, so I’m not really surprised that it didn’t make its way into this set.Īfter all these years, I’m not sure what’s really left to say about the first Evil Dead that hasn’t already been said, but I think what surprised me about revisiting it for this 4K release is how Sam Raimi’s game-changer felt so revitalized by this new presentation. That’s why I was pretty stoked to check out The Evil Dead Groovy Collection, which features both The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, as well the entire run of the Ash vs Evil Dead series and a ton of special features, making this collection a terror-filled treasure trove of demon-fueled fun. While it’s true that we’ve had quite a few releases of the Evil Dead films over the years, this writer somehow never really got into collecting all those releases, so I think the last time I even bought the first two Evil Dead films on home media was sometime in the early 2010s (I’m a bad horror fan, yes).