Sightlines · reception
How Evil Dead II was received
1987 · Sam Raimi · Evil Dead II on Sightlines
The arc
A modest indie release in 1987 that horror fans loved but the mainstream ignored — decades of VHS circulation and midnight screenings turned it into the consensus pinnacle of the horror-comedy, now routinely ranked among the greatest sequels ever made.
What’s debated
The forever-debate: is it a sequel or a remake of the first film — and is its splatstick lunacy an upgrade on the original's straight horror or a betrayal of it?
Its footprint
'Groovy' and the chainsaw-for-a-hand are permanent pop-culture furniture, endlessly quoted and borrowed by video games (Duke Nukem, countless others) and spawning Ash as an icon who carried a whole franchise — comics, games, and the Ash vs Evil Dead series.
Where it stands
A cult object that fully climbed into the canon — the 'you must have seen this' entry point to Raimi and a perennial horror-fan and Letterboxd favorite.
Did you know? Stephen King, a vocal champion of the first Evil Dead, personally helped convince producer Dino De Laurentiis to finance the sequel.
Named by the director
- The Three Stooges — Raimi has repeatedly cited the Stooges' slapstick as the direct template for the film's physical comedy — Ash's self-battering scenes are essentially Stooges routines with gore.