This is about the 2013 film directed by Fede Álvarez. You might be looking for the 1981 film The Evil Dead directed by Sam Raimi.

Evil Dead is a 2013 horror film written and directed by Fede Álvarez, based on the 1981 film The Evil Dead directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues, the film stars Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, and Elizabeth Blackmore. The fourth theatrically released installment of the Evil Dead franchise, the film made it's world premiere at the South By Southwest Film Festival on March 8th, 2013, with the wider United States release occurring on April 5th, 2013.

Plot Synopsis

A young girl is seen running through a dark forest, before she is subdued by a group of men, who manage to knock her unconscious. The girl later awakens in what appears to be a cellar, surrounded by the same group of men, as well as an old woman and her father, who reveals that the girl had murdered her mother some time earlier. The old woman, speaking in another language, urges the man to kill his daughter, who is revealed to be possessed by a demonic force, which takes control of her, taunting the man over his wife's murder. The girl's father proceeds to immolate her, as she screams in agony.

Years pass, and a group of friends (consisting of David Allen, his girlfriend Natalie, David's friends Eric and Olivia, and David's younger half-sister Mia) meet at an isolated cabin the woods which belongs to David and Mia's family. Eric and Olivia are old friends of David and Mia's and have come to assist Mia in overcoming her heroin addiction. Upon entering the cabin, Mia notices an awful scent of decay, leading David and the others descend into the cellar, where they discover animal corpses as well as a rifle and a strange book entitled Naturom Demonto. A curious Eric ignores warnings scrawled in the book and reads an incantation, which releases a demonic force called The Taker of Souls that begins appearing to Mia as an evil doppelganger of herself. She begs David to take her back to town, but he refuses, believing she is becoming unhinged due to her heroin withdrawal. In response, Mia climbs out of a window and flees in one of their vehicles, but sees a figure in the road and swerves to avoid hitting it, crashing into a nearby pond. Mia emerges from the vehicle, unscathed, but is attacked by the demon, which chases her through the woods. She eventually tumbles into some vines that quickly ensnare her, before the doppelganger appears, opening its mouth. A slimy vine-like appendage slithers forth from the demon's mouth, before crawling inside of Mia between her legs. She is later discovered by David, who drives her back to the cabin.

A traumatized Mia takes refuge in one of the bedrooms. When David checks on her, Mia begs him to leave the cabin, but he once again refuses. Following this, David discovers his dog, Grandpa, bludgeoned to death with a hammer, before finding an unresponsive Mia in a scalding hot shower. He decides to drive her to a nearby hospital, but discovers the road is inaccessible due to flooding. David is forced to bring Mia back to the cabin, where she is put to bed by Olivia. As the group argues over her growing mental instability, Mia appears with a rifle and shoots David in the shoulder, before warning the group that they are all going to die and passing out. As Olivia goes to check Mia's vitals, she suddenly revives and vomits blood onto Olivia, before David pushes her down into the cellar. Olivia goes to the bathroom, where she attempts to clean the blood off, but becomes possessed in the process. A concerned Eric appears and is attacked by Olivia, who wounds him with a shard from a broken mirror and a syringe, only for Eric to bludgeon her to death.

While Davis is nursing his wounds, Eric reveals he unknowingly released some sort of demonic force from the book found in the basement; meanwhile, Natalie goes to fetch some water for David and is lured into the cellar by a possessed Mia, who sexually assaults her. David appears and rescues Natalie, who climbs out of the cellar, while Mia taunts David. David proceeds to chain the cellar door. Natalie soon realizes she is next to become possessed, due to Mia having bitten her hand earlier, and proceeds to amputate her quickly decaying arm with an electric carving knife. David cares for the wounded Natalie, while Eric reveals the only means of purging the entity are immolation, dismemberment, or live burial. Suddenly, a possessed Natalie ambushes the two. She attacks them with a nail gun, before beating Eric with a crowbar, only to be shot and killed by David, who holds her as she finally succumbs to her wounds.

David decides to abandon the cabin and asks Eric to wait at his Jeep, planning to burn the cabin down with Mia inside. However, Mia manipulates David into sparing her and he decides to bury her alive instead. As he descends into the watery cellar to get her, Mia assaults and attempts to drown him, but is subdued by Eric, who is stabbed with a box-cutter in the process. Eric ultimately succumbs to his wounds and dies. David buries Mia alive, who taunts him over their mother's death. Moments later, David proceeds to dig her body up and resuscitates her. When he enters the cabin to grab the keys to his Jeep, Eric appears and stabs him with a pair of pliers, having become possessed in his final moments. In a last act of defiance, David shoots a canister of gasoline, causing an explosive fire which kills himself and Eric's possessed form.

With five souls now claimed, blood rains down from the sky and the Abomination rises from the depths of Hell in the form of Mia's evil doppelganger. The Abomination chases Mia, who attempts to escape in the Jeep, but is attacked and burned in the process. She takes refuge in a nearby tool shed, where she arms herself with a chainsaw, which she uses to amputate the demon's legs. However, she becomes trapped when the demon rolls the Jeep over, pinning Mia's arm to the ground. In a final effort to escape, Mia rips her own arm off, before shoving the chainsaw into the demon's skull, bisecting it. The blood rain ceases and the demon is swallowed by the ground from which it emerged. A traumatized Mia limps away from the cabin, as the Naturom Demonto closes on its own.

Cast

• Jane Levy - Mia Allen
• Shiloh Fernandez - David Allen
• Lou Taylor Pucci - Eric
• Jessica Lucas - Olivia
• Elizabeth Blackmore - Natalie
• Randal Wilson - The Abomination
• Rupert Degas - The Abomination (voice only)
• Phoenix Connolly - Teenage Girl
• Jim McLarty - Harold
• Sian Davis - Old Woman
• Ellen Sandweiss - Cheryl Williams (archive audio from The Evil Dead)
• Bob Dorian - Professor Raymond Knowby (archive audio from The Evil Dead)
• Bruce Campbell - Ash Williams

Alternate Versions

Unrated Cut

On January 25th, 2015, an "unrated" version of Evil Dead aired on the United Kingdom's Channel 4 television station.^[1] This version of the film includes minor tweaks, short additional dialogue between characters, and short sequences not featured in the original theatrical cut, bringing the film's runtime up to 97 minutes.^[2] This unrated cut would later be on various digital movie purchasing platforms in October of 2016, with it's first home media release in a Japanese exclusive Blu-ray released in March of 2017, and a United States release following in October of 2018.^[3][4]

Alternate Ending

Evil Dead features two different endings, one where Mia is attacked by the unseen demon and presumably killed (mirroring the ending of the original 1981 film), and an ending where Mia escapes the cabin. Fede Álvarez originally intended to use the ending in which Mia dies, but was persuaded to change the scene at the request of Sam Raimi.^[5] As of 2026, this ending has never been included on any home media release of the film, and was uploaded to Twitter by Álvarez himself on April 6th, 2022, the day after the ninth anniversary of the film's release.^[6][7]

Continuity

In the years following the film's release, there has been heavy debate over the film's placement into the greater Evil Dead mythology, and whether or not it is a sequel or remake of the 1981 film. Though there was initially plans for Ash Williams (the protagonist of the original Evil Dead films) to make a cameo as a truck driver at the end of the 2013 film, director Fede Álvarez would later reveal that Sam Raimi was against Ash appearing in the film, as Raimi was actively developing what eventually became the Ash vs Evil Dead television series and did not want to connect his story to the story of the 2013 film.^[8] In 2015, while promoting the premiere of the Ash vs Evil Dead television series, Bruce Campbell stated that there was "no connection whatsoever" between the 2013 film and the TV series, and that "That was a director who had a whim, who goes, 'I have this great idea. It has nothing to do with anything, but I want to do it.'"^[9]

In 2018, Fede Álvarez responded to a fan's question on Twitter about the 2013 Evil Dead film being a remake or sequel, to which Álvarez stated "It continues the first one. The coincidences on events between the first film and mine are not coincidences, but more like dark fate created by the evil book. (Ash car is still there rusting away)."^[10] This means that the 2013 follows directly on from the 1981 film, implying that Ash Williams had died in this continuity if the events of Evil Dead II film did not transpire.

The 2026 film Evil Dead Burn (a direct sequel to the 2023 film Evil Dead Rise) features a newspaper clipping in a scrapbook referencing the climax of the 2013 film with a headline reading "Four bodies found in cabin fire", as well as a pencil illustration of the Naturom Demonto book from Álvarez's film. This same scrapbook also contains a reference to Raymond Knowby's recordings, which aligns with Álvarez's 2018 statement of his film branching off of the 1981 film.^[11]

Trivia

• The first names of the five main characters of the film (David, Eric, Mia, Olivia, and Natalie) spell out the word "DEMON".
• English actress Lily Collins was originally cast as Mia in January of 2012, but had to drop out of the film later the same month due to scheduling conflicts with another project.^[12][13]
• According to Fede Álvarez, Bruce Campbell's cameo at the end of the film was "very spur of the moment" following Fede's earlier rejected proposal to Sam Raimi about using Ash in the film's main story.^[14] Álvarez reworked the cameo during the film's post-production stage and filming the scene with Campbell in one of the production office rooms with a camcorder and a borrowed lamp.^[8]

References