The Evil Dead trilogy is an interesting piece of business when you look at the grand scope of the whole thing. In the beginning, you had the original Evil Dead film, which was a decently conceived horror flick built on a crummy budget, some amateurish performances, and a lot of Bruce Campbell getting the crap beaten out of him and then covering him in said crap.
On the other side, you have the Army of Darkness, a much slicker film with a bigger budget, but is more of a comedic fantasy film; its horror aspects having been somewhat toned down from that early effort. However, sitting in between these two very opposite films is the middle child of the trilogy, Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn.
Evil Dead II represented the series’ transition from pure horror movie to slapstick comedy; I believe Bruce Campbell referred to it as “splatstick”. This sequel – a partial remake that retells the first movie but a sequel nonetheless – is more light-hearted than the original and whatever horror elements are used in comic effect. The movie isn’t taken as seriously as it was the first time around and I think that helps a bit as it gives the Ash character some personality instead of just the gutless coward that he was in the first movie.
Don’t confuse light-heartedness with kid-friendly; despite having comic moments, this is still partially a horror flick and there is gratuitous gore and graphic violence. It doesn’t really go overboard however; there weren’t any tree rapings like in the first one. Still, there’s a bit more money put into this one. Bruce Campbell is on the verge of finding that voice for Ash that he’d eventually develop in Army Of Darkness and the rest of the cast that ended up roped into this party turned out slightly better (if not some cliche) performances on this second go-around.
Evil Dead 2 is probably my favorite of the three films. It retains some of the horror aspects that made the first movie memorable while starting to invoke some of Army Of Darkness’s playfulness without leaning into full-bore parody. Army may be the more quotable one, but there’s plenty of good stuff in Dead By Dawn.
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