Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead franchise changed shape each time Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) survived it. The 1981 original treated the Necronomicon and its Deadites as cabin-bound nightmare fuel. Evil Dead II pushed the same possession horror into physical comedy, geysers of blood, demonic slapstick, and Campbell fighting his own hand. Then, Army of Darkness dropped Ash into a medieval fantasy complete with an army of skeletons. And while Raimi did not helm the complete television continuation from 2015 — the helm rotated between horror and action veterans like M.J. Bassett, Rick Jacobson, David Frazee, and Michael Hurst — he directed the pilot episode and co-created the rest of the show.
That show is currently trending on the Apple TV Store and Lionsgate+. The 2015-2018 television continuation restores the claustrophobic possession horror, Raimi’s elastic camera movement, chainsaw dismemberment, absurd one-liners, and the uncomfortable truth that Ash is brave enough to save humanity while remaining barely qualified to manage his own life. The story catches him three decades later, drifting between dead-end Value Stop jobs and pretending the cabin years never damaged him. On the Apple TV Store in both the UK and the U.S., the series stayed between #10 and #19 spots from July 16 to July 22. On Lionsgate+ (Amazon Channels) in Italy, the 2015-2018 Evil Dead TV run popped up twice in the most streamed Top 10 media on the platform — once at #8 and then at #10 on July 22.
The series is Ash vs Evil Dead; it was co-created by Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi, and Tom Spezialy, with Raimi directing the pilot and Campbell returning alongside Ray Santiago, Dana DeLorenzo, and Lucy Lawless. Its three seasons contain only 30 episodes, generally running around half an hour each, making the complete story roughly a 15-hour binge.
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Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
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🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
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01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
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02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
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03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
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04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
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05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
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06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
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07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
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08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
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Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
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Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
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He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
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But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
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You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
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The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
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You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
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Fans Didn’t Love Fede Alvarez’s Brutally Serious Take on ‘Evil Dead’ in 2013
Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead in 2013 dropped all comedy to focus on extreme, graphic, and visceral survival horror, but its critics’ and audience score (64% each) on movie aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes says that it didn’t exactly click well with audiences. When Bruce Campbell returned as Ash in 2015 for the series, it was an instant hit; 11 years later, Ash vs Evil Dead still sits at a 99% overall score, with Season 1 at 98% and Seasons 2 and 3 at a perfect 100% each.
The show ended with Season 3, but Ash’s story didn’t stop there. After he finally accepts his responsibility and saves the world, he awakens in a devastated future where the Deadite war is still waiting for him. Starz canceled the series before a fourth season, leaving Ash in the post-apocalyptic future without a filmed resolution. Evil Dead Rise and Evil Dead Burn continue the wider franchise as standalone sequels with new characters and settings, not continuing Ash’s storyline nor bringing back Jane Levy’s Mia from 2013.
Ash vs Evil Dead is currently available to stream on Lionsgate+ and can be purchased or rented on the Apple TV Store in the U.S. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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