Evil Dead Icon Bruce Campbell Reveals What the New Movies Keep Getting Wrong (And He’s Right)

For decades, two things were true about every Evil Dead movie. The first is that Sam Raimi directed all of them, and the second is that Bruce Campbell starred as the hapless idiot Ash Williams in all of them. Since then, the series has shifted on those two points specifically. Campbell has taken a backseat from being in front of the camera, and Raimi himself has opened up the franchise to other filmmakers to put their own spin on the series and expand the mythology. For the most part, it’s an experiment that has worked, revitalizing the series with box office hits that tower over the original movies. That in mind, those two differences in the new Evil Dead and the old Evil Dead have started a debate.

A recurring critique about the Evil Dead movies that haven’t had Sam Raimi as the director is their distinct tonal shift, from horror-comedies to pure horror movies. Even Bruce Campbell has noticed it, revealing in an interview with Men’s Journal that he has one thing he’d like all of the new movies to lean on it, which is bringing back the jokes. Campbell went on to note that he has faith the next movie in the series, the already wrapped Evil Dead Wrath, will be good, but he had a word of advice for all new takes on Evil Dead, saying: “Little more humor wouldn’t kill you.”

Evil Dead’s Bruce Campbell Says New Movies in Series Need More Humor

To Campbell’s credit, the 2013 Evil Dead remake from Fede Álvarez was quite humorless, with no slapstick jokes to be found and only a handful of levity in the slightest. Evil Dead Rise brought some jokes to the mix, as did Evil Dead Burn, but none have the mix of horror and humor that Raimi’s films have.

“I’d like more humor back in,” Campbell said. “The three features have been mostly humorless, and I personally have a problem with that. Because there’s no point for these to get too grim. You can be scary without being grim.”

The three Evil Dead movies made without Sam Raimi in the director’s chair have largely prioritized maintaining a gory consistency from the other films, while amping up even more gratuitous violence. To that end, humor hasn’t been a big priority, but when the franchise was previously defined by evil-laughing deer heads and eyeballs flying into people’s minds, it’s easy

Campbell went on to note that another complaint he has with modern films (not specifically meaning the new Evil Dead movies) is that the color grading is a gray-green, comparing it to both “hospital room” and “garage lighting.” He did note that the Evil Dead series does have a rule about color: The blood better look red when it’s on screen, adding: “It’s the oldest story in the book, but your blood has to look red. So, timing-wise, if you can get all gray-green, but that red’s got to be red.” To his credit, the filmmakers so far have managed to check that off well.

The actor had a tease for the next movie in the series, Evil Dead Wrath, from filmmaker Francis Galluppi. Campbell noted he was confident the movie “will be good” because Galluppi’s previous film, the neo-western The Last Stop in Yuma County, “was really cool and really smart and really well thought out.”

“That’s half the battle,” Campbell added. “You go, ‘Okay, we got a filmmaker who has a clue.’”