August 27 2026, 18:09

Army of Darkness

Director: Sam Raimi

Release year: 1992

This was not the film I was expecting from a third film in the Evil Dead trilogy. I was not prepared for the levels of goof and silliness, but perhaps I’m not remembering Evil Dead 2 accurately, and I’m definitely the wrong audience for the broad humour this goes for. I did not have a good time.

After fighting Deadites in a cabin in the woods, Ash falls through a time/space hole and lands in a medieval landscape where he is taken prisoner by Lord Arthur. At Arthur’s castle, Ash is thrown into a pit of Deadites, but with the help of Arthur’s Wise Man, he defeats them with his chainsaw and shotgun. The man tells Ash that only the magical book, the Necronomicon, can send him home, so Ash sets out to find it. He brings the book back, but behind him are an army of Deadites led by his doppelgänger, Evil Ash.

Bruce Campbell goes full three stooges in his fights with the Deadites, which I found irritating, and other attempts at humour tip the whole film perilously close to an unfunny version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Ash’s clichéd machismo and “quotable” moments were jarring and dull. I don’t have a previous relationship with this film, so there’s no nostalgia factor. The action scenes were good, and the fight scenes with the skeleton army at the end saved it from oblivion for me. (And it really should have been called The Medieval Dead.)

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