I’ve had a good time with the nastier direction the Evil Dead franchise has taken over the past decade. The 2013 reboot movie was absolutely merciless, Evil Dead Rise found a fresh setting and plenty of disgusting ways to use it, and the 2026 movie schedule release — Evil Dead Burn — was relentlessly nasty, keeping the franchise’s reputation for soaking its characters in blood intact. Still, something has been missing, and series star and producer Bruce Campbell just put his finger on what he thinks it is. In my opinion, he’s dead right.
Where Bruce Campbell Thinks Evil Dead Has Lost Its Way
While discussing the franchise with Men’s Journal, the face (and chin) behind Ash Williams admitted he has a personal problem with where the recent films have gone. For Campbell, the movies have become too grim and left too much of the franchise’s sense of humor behind. Explaining what he’d like to see in any new horror movie entries in the franchise moving forward, he said:
I’d like more humor back in. The three features have been mostly humorless, and I personally have a problem with that. There’s no point for these to get too grim. You can be scary without being grim. A little more humor wouldn’t kill you. And one hero that you really can root for. Ash is an idiot, but you want him to survive.
That last point is what really sticks with me. Campbell is not asking for every new movie to turn into Army of Darkness. He is not arguing that Deadites should stop being scary or that every burst of gore needs a punchline. He wants some personality back in the bloodbath.
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He also took a shot at the visual language of modern horror, joking about the gray-green “garage lighting” that shows up so often. Horror, Campbell argued, can still look beautiful before everything goes wrong. He has an equally simple rule for the gore: when the blood arrives, make sure it actually looks red. That all sounds pretty reasonable to me.
There is at least some reason to be optimistic about the next movie. Campbell is serving as an executive producer on Francis Galluppi’s Evil Dead Wrath, and he told the outlet he has “high hopes” after seeing Galluppi’s The Last Stop in Yuma County. That movie convinced him the filmmaker had the right instincts for the job.
Why I’ve Also Been Missing The Humor
The best Evil Dead movies have always understood how absurd this universe is. A possessed hand attacks its owner. An eyeball goes flying across a room. Ash straps a chainsaw where his hand used to be and somehow still has enough energy to toss out action-movie one-liners. “You ain’t leading but two things right now: Jack and s–t… and Jack left town” is an all-timer. I’d happily settle for something even 25% that funny in the next movie.
Sam Raimi could make the Deadites genuinely nasty while still understanding that Bruce Campbell getting beaten senseless by furniture was hilarious. That balance helped give the franchise its identity. I loved how mean the 2013 movie was, and Evil Dead Rise has some terrific sequences. These movies have practically made fake blood a competitive sport. I do not want future entries to pull back on the horror, but I would like them to remember that non-stop misery is not the only way to make Evil Dead work.
Campbell’s point about Ash gets at the bigger issue. Ash is arrogant, selfish, usually terrified and often somewhat idiotic, but you still want him to survive. He gives all that chaos someone worth following. That is what I’d love to see Wrath rediscover. Give me a character memorable enough that I actually care when the Deadites start closing in on them. Leave enough room for a joke to land, then drown the whole thing in bright red blood.
Yeah, now that sounds like one groovy Evil Dead movie.
Evil Dead Wrath unfortunately will not make the 2026 or 2027 movie calendars. Fans will have to wait until April 7, 2028, to catch the next installment in theaters. Details about the series’ future are still fairly limited, but producers have revealed that Wrath is a prequel. Maybe that means a return to the cabin in the woods, and, with any luck, a return to some of the humor that helped define the franchise in the first place.