Ash Vs. Evil Dead

Starz | Release Date: October 31, 2015

8.9	USER SCORE Universal acclaim based on 36 Ratings

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MeritCobaJun 22, 2021

Whether you like Ash VS Evil Dead depends entirely on your sense of humor. This is a comedy horror that leans in on playing around with horror tropes and not on anything else. An example is Ash himself; too self-assured, too heavyset, and tooWhether you like Ash VS Evil Dead depends entirely on your sense of humor. This is a comedy horror that leans in on playing around with horror tropes and not on anything else. An example is Ash himself; too self-assured, too heavyset, and too crude. He wields a chainsaw as his right hand and a shotgun in the left and he happily murders you when you get on the wrong end of both. He is both hero and anti-hero. And he always wears his blue worker shirt. Perhaps a reference to being a blue-collar worker? Who knows?

The strength of the series is also its weakness. Poking fun at horror tropes might work for a single movie and might be repeated for another a few years later, but it runs into issues in a series that gets spread out over several seasons in close succession. It is like zombie movies. Zombies are the challenge at first, but once the dust has settled, it is humans that become the greater danger and the series relegate the zombies to the background. This happens in the Walking Dead, this happens in Z Nation, this happens in Black Summer and this happens in many others.

The problem with Ash VS Evil Dead is that it chains itself to these tropes. This becomes noticeable in season two. Again we see a group of young pretty people getting horribly murdered in silly ways. And again there is a hot girl/woman that turns out to be a Deadite. And yet again almost everyone does the same stupid things: exploring creepy places and sounds, running away and falling, then crawling instead of getting up and running, hiding in places that are so obvious, splitting up in the face of danger.

These issues get worse because the main characters did not learn from their experiences from the first season. Body on the ground; examine it: oops it jumps up. Someone proposes a deal too good to be true: fall for it anyway. Someone appears in a corridor and waves: investigate without warning the others. This is next to issues like: how come this diverse group is still hanging out with the unlikable Ash after season one?

This was fun in the first season, but in the second it gets stale quick. The second season simply goes for a reset so they can redo the first season as Ash VS Evil Dead is a comedy horror that leans in on playing around with horror tropes and not on anything else. Like a hamster in cage wheel it runs and goes nowhere fast.

That there is a third season is surprising, but not too much so. Perhaps the powers-that-be hoped for the best. There is a dedicated following that wants to see the same thing over and over: Ash murdering stuff. But a niche audience might make for high scores on Metacritic and Imdb, but fails regarding the bottom-line. In the end, it is all about the money and a select audience does not court the advertisers.

I found season one is fun, season two wore me out and season three I didn’t see. To the niche audience: Guys if you want to see another Ash VS Evil Dead I guess you have to crowdfund it or wait for a decade(or three). Good luck.… Expand

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