Evil Dead II Might Be the Greatest Reboot Ever Made

Legendary director Sam Raimi didn’t set out to make a sequel to The Evil Dead. By the mid-1980s, he’d made an effort to move on to other projects, but when his comedy Crimewave didn’t quite land with audiences, a back-to-the-well approach was suggested. Then came producer Dino De Laurentiis, who was willing to back Raimi’s next effort to long as it was similar to Evil Dead, and Evil Dead II (airing this week on SYFY) was born. 

Raimi had originally planned his sequel film to be something more like what the third installment of the series, Army of Darkness, would eventually become, a movie featuring Medieval knights and time travel and all sorts of monsters. But tasked with delivering something recognizable to the original Evil Dead audience, Raimi, producer Rob Tapert, and co-writer Scott Spiegel instead set out to reimagine the original film’s premise, keeping much of the structure intact while infusing more comedy, bigger effects, and a larger cast. The result was not only a sort-of-sequel, but arguably the best reboot ever made.

Why Evil Dead II works so well

Like The Evil Dead before it, 1987’s Evil Dead II is the story of Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), a carefree college student who heads out with his girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler) for a weekend getaway at an isolated cabin. Once there, Ash plays a tape of an academic reading aloud from the Necronomicon Ex Mortis (aka The Book of the Dead), and accidentally unleashes demonic forces on the house. The initial setup is a bit different — five people visit the cabin in The Evil Dead, while Evil Dead II starts with one couple — but we’re basically talking about the exact same premise. Ash even drives the same car (which appears in all of Raimi’s films, as his superfans know). 

So, why do this? Why launch a supposed sequel, released just six years after the first film, that basically borrows everything about its opening minutes from its predecessor? Why use essentially the same set, the same lead actor, the same car, even a redesigned version of the same Book of the Dead? The short answer is because that’s what the producers backing the film wanted, but the longer answer is what makes Evil Dead II so intriguing. 

For all its raw horrors and undeniable charm, The Evil Dead is a rough movie, made by a lot of people who’d never made a feature film before. Actors were thrown around and injured, the entire crew slept in the set, and it took a very long time to put together and finally showcase. Evil Dead II, then, was a chance to refine everything about the process of making The Evil Dead, with the help of a bigger budget and the backing of a major producer. It was also, for every returning cast and crew member involved, an exercise in maturity. Everyone was older, smarter, and better at making movies, which meant that Raimi could stretch out and really find the film he wanted to make. 

And what he wanted to make, it turns out, was an absolutely unhinged horror-comedy about a man who just can’t catch a break, who finds evil at every turn, and has to keep fighting until his only remaining choice is to laugh and scream his way through the terror. Campbell, whose natural physical comedy skills were already on display in The Evil Dead, meets the moment with astonishing, relentless energy, while Raimi’s camera gets even zanier and his plotting even tighter. This time around, for example, the rest of the cast only arrives after Ash has gone mad with demonic torment, giving them something to react against rather than telling the story of a group of people all thrown off the deep end at the same time. It makes the back half of the movie a completely unpredictable ride, from the creatures we see to the ending that teases what would eventually become Army of Darkness.

All of this madcap energy, combined with Raimi’s matured skills as a director, means that Evil Dead II takes on the kind of chaotic energy that makes it work not just as a reboot, but as a true sequel. Why would Ash return to the same cabin where his friends all died? Why would he drive the same car, read from the same book, get in the same kind of trouble? Because this is exactly the kind of world where something that insane and frightening would happen, and that kind of twisted logic elevates Evil Dead II into a horror space all its own, cementing its status as one of the best reboots or sequels in this or any other genre.

Evil Dead II airs this week on SYFY. Check the schedule for details.