Review Detail

This edit is essentially Season 3 of Ash Vs Evil Dead, boiled down into 2 hours. After an extremely brief setup taken from Season 1 to show that Ash is working at a hardware store and knows 2 people named Pablo and Kelly, all that is pretty much abandoned as the film launches into the final season of the show, focusing on Ash's long-lost daughter and on antagonist Ruby having an evil baby-Ash.

While these weren't bad storylines (I liked the show as a whole!), they certainly weren't my favorite parts. In fact, if there's ONE thing I would definitely have thought to cut out from a film version, it would be the last-minute discovery of a next-gen Williams. It's a tired trope, and is mostly used for comedy to show Ash as a bad dad, which: duh, of course he is. In terms of choosing what to cut and what to include in a film edit of the show, I actually would've skipped MOST of season 3 and focused on the first 2 seasons. It's a downright travesty that the morgue fight against the corpse from season 2 is skipped... it just might be the funniest, most horrific scene in all Ash's history!

Aside from my personal preference for enjoyability, skipping some of this material does present some narrative issues as well. I watched this with a friend who'd never seen the series, and I checked in with him periodically to see what our different takes were. He said that it was very clear that events were being skipped over, but mostly he could write it off. A few things that were confusing is that Pablo and Kelly seem to be important characters, but they're not introduced at all... we have no idea who they are or what their motivations are. Kelly in particularly is almost completely absent from the narrative until suddenly her death is important. Similarly, Ash's dad comes out of nowhere. Important events with these characters are referenced in the dialogue, not in a "hey remember when this thing happened long ago?" way, but in a way like the audience is expected to know the event.

The two clunkiest bits are the random inclusion of Ash partying in Fort Lauderdale, and the fight he has with his possessed car. The first one simply because Ash is dressed differently and we have no context for where he is or why, just that the continuity doesn't match. The 2nd one was completely confusing to my friend...it seems to be presented as if it's a dream sequence, but again, there's zero context and it's not clear what's happening, and then suddenly it's over.

For the most part though, the season 3 narrative is stitched together and compressed well. There are definitely long, indulgent scenes that don't move the narrative forward so must be favorites of the editor, and that's subjective. But you do get a general idea of the key events of the season and the bravura ending is kept intact. The audio and video is all pulled together very professionally and you wouldn't suspect any cuts if not for the narrative gaps.

I'd say that this works best as a compression of Season 3, a film to wrap-up the show after the excellent first two seasons. It's hard to say that it really works well or you get much of the impact of events without having seen those, as there's no background or development to any of these characters (besides Ash from the films). But if like me you thought Season 3 was the weakest, you could watch the first two in full and then end with this. Otherwise, I'd just recommend watching the whole show. There are so many great scenes in it that aren't included here, especially lots of the material written and directed by Sam Raimi himself.