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Review for Ash vs Evil Dead 201
By A. Zombie

aved201partytimePablo and Kelly sling beer at a dive bar in Jacksonville, FL while Ash makes himself the life of the party. For one of them, life after the deadite invasion is golden. There’s plenty of hot chicks, alcohol, and his little lizard buddy is there to play wingman. Ash’s happiness is hollow and fleeting, like a chocolate bunny left in an oven. Things are amiss with the dark side. They’re gonna need the bumbling savior once again.

Enter the deadites, and they’ve got a message from the woman in charge, “The truce is over.” Ash’s fighting skills were swapped for keg-cutting and flirting. The fights are slapstick, with Ash struggling to do the heroic moves he’d mastered over years fighting evil. The deadites, primarily a woman he’d flirted with before crap hit the fan, taunt Ash with “Ashy Slashy” rhymes. There’s only one way Ruby knows exactly how to get under his skin—she’s in Elk Grove, his hometown.

aved201familyreunionThere’s no waffling around, when Ash reaches Elk Grove, he stops by the old homestead. Enter Brock Williams—Ash’s cantankerous, unsupportive father, who greets house guests by firing a warning shot past their ear. There’s no love in his heart for his wayward, murdering son or his sidekick, Pablo, but he really wants a date with Kelly. The offer is shot down before he finishes asking her out.

With nothing more than a city’s name, the gang’s gonna need some help finding Ruby. Too bad Ash is the town’s local serial killer and they want less than nothing to do with him, or his mission to save mankind. Linda Bates is the sole kind soul at the bar Ash visits looking for information. Her kindness ends where her husband’s hatred begins, though. Sheriff Thomas Emery would gladly tar and feather Ash if given the chance.

Pablo ends up proving his usefulness . . . by having wicked violent hallucinations linking his mind to the Necronomicon again. The hallucinations, and Pablo’s mind, are sharp enough to feed the gang the clues they need to find Ruby. It’s too easy. They’re totally walking into a trap.

It’s actually a trap for the Mother of Darkness. Ruby’s been cornered in Elk Grove’s crematorium since the freak deadite storm in Florida. Her babies, those freaky little bastards, matured into malicious demonspawn hellbent on using the Necronomicon to their own devices—personal theory, they want to summon Great Daddy Evil and get the family reunion really rolling. The only way Ruby knows to contain the new evil threat is with Ash’s help. There’s a boatload of character development for Ruby in her brief scenes. Necessary development since it’s well known the character didn’t have much on paper when Lawless took on the role for season one. As much as I enjoy watching Ash fumble through his savior complex, I want to see what Lawless can do with Ruby. There’s great potential for her to go good or evil, and that’s the real attention-grabber for season two. When it comes time to decide, will Ruby back Ash or will she fall to old ways and reign over evil once her darling problem children are disposed of?

The adult demonspawn are freaky. There’s awesome physical movement from the one who attacks Pablo, in particular. It’s easy to rely on scary makeup to push the point, but changing the way the creature moves to make it truly inhuman makes a simplistic design much more effective. They also morph into shadow creatures and take on human form, adding infinite opportunity to mix up fight scenes if these guys are going to stick around as the primary kill-target this season.

With the gang together again, they’re off to stop Ruby’s great mistake. So, what are the odds Ash annoys her so much she tries to kill him before they’ve been on the road an hour?


Bound in the Flesh: Review for Ash vs Evil Dead 109 By A. Zombie

AvED 109 Opening Shot
How does one figure out which Ash is which? Let them babble long enough for you to recognize just why the real one annoys you so much. It works well for Kelly and Pablo. Once they take out BadAsh, the gang is forced to divide and conquer. Ash stays inside to dispose of the bodies before they turn deadite. Pablo and Kelly head outside to stop Brad, Heather, and Brad’s wife from discovering the grisly scene in the cabin. Matter of fact, they’re so willing to keep these hikers from becoming deadite fodder, the duo offer to escort them to the road.

Just one hitch in the plan. When Ash finishes disposing of his doppelganger, and having a chat with the Necronomicon, Amanda’s body is missing. Not for long. DeadAmanda stops the fleeing hikers. Not to be rude, she even performs a puppet show for them. Unfortunately, she is fresh out of puppets, so Brad and his wife have a little room made in their heads to accommodate DeadAmanda’s hands for the performance. What’s the play? Oh, just a little comedy starring Kelly and Pablo, highlighting how pathetic they are. DeadAmanda pins the duo with the corpses, leaving Heather to fend for herself. The woman wisely runs. She makes it pretty far before being caught, toyed with, and thrown into a tree where she suffers a compound fracture. Pablo tries to save Heather. Tries.

AvED 109 DAmanda Puppet Theatre

Suddenly from the trees, Ruby to the rescue! DeadAmanda doesn’t hang around long for the fight. The second Ruby’s guard is down, the deadite books it. There’s a nice bit where Ruby rants about Ash and his oafish ways with the Necronomicon while dismembering Heather’s friends so they don’t come back. It’s a classic gross-out splatstick gag.

We finally get to see Ash and Ruby together. Though at this point in the game, I’m still not sure which one to trust with the future of mankind. Ash thinks with his junk and accidentally unleashed evil on middle America. Ruby, on the other hand, is a mysterious badass fighter who came out of nowhere, but seems to know a lot about how to fight evil. She could even be a competent ally in disposing of the book.

Yeah right.

Ruby convinces Ash the key to destroying the Necronomicon involves defacing—literally—the book with her super special dagger before burying it. At no point during this whole ritual does Ash stop and listen to Ruby’s word choice. It’s not until she’s reading from the book and hell starts creeping closer to the cabin that he thinks to take the book back from her. Damage done, dude. The Necronomicon’s loose face launches at Pablo, wrapping around his face like a mask. What can they do? Does Ruby actually know what she’s doing? Duh? She wrote the thing.

AvED 109 Kelly Pablo Heather

Wait, what?

Ruby being the Necronomicon’s creator is a pretty awesome twist to what little folklore was ever explored for the book. Too bad we learn this right before the season finale. Thank goodness we know season two is on the way. Maybe they’ll expand on Ruby and her connection to the Necronomicon. Then again, it could be a finale where Ash kills everyone. Who knows with this show.