Before EVIL DEAD BURN drags us back to hell this Friday July 10th, Luke and Dylan are breaking down 5 horror movies that are basically Evil Dead sequels — not by name, but in their blood. From the franchise crossover nobody saw coming, to Raimi's own studio-polished spiritual successor, to a 2022 found-footage mutation that proves the Evil Dead spirit is STILL spreading. These aren't official sequels. But by the end, you'll agree they might as well be — and you'll understand why no horror franchise has aged better.
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8 Horror Movies That Feel Like Unofficial Evil Dead Sequels
Back in 1981, a broke Michigan kid showed up at a frigid cabin with a chainsaw, a 16mm camera and the equivalent of a small apartment loan from his family, friends and local dentists. What he thought would be a quick, small-scale horror flick ended up unleashing something that's been haunting the genre ever since — 44 years and counting. This is the lineage of eight movies that, in many ways, are unofficial Evil Dead sequels -- using the same genes, props, spirit, and sometimes, even the same universe as Sam Raimi's low-budget terror.
First up is the 1978 short, "Within the Woods," the 30-minute proof-of-concept film that started it all, establishing Raimi's wild, kinetic camera work and a few too many of the ideas that made it into "The Evil Dead."
Watch WITHIN THE WOODS on YouTube | Sam Raimi’s Prototype for The Evil Dead | Rare HD Restoration:
"Night of the Demons" from 1988 owes so much to "Evil Dead 2" it might as well be a deadite. It's an extremely watchable film, with an insane mixture of supernatural chaos, laughs, guts and creature-feature evil that perfectly captures the feel of the series.
While "Jason Goes to Hell" in 1993 isn't technically a crossover, the appearance of the Necronomicon and the way the killer operates through host bodies and possessions, really makes it feel like Friday the 13th took a run at the Deadite playbook.
The Japanese cult classic "Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell," also known as the "Japanese Evil Dead," pretty much is the "Evil Dead." Director Shinichi Fukazawa, who shot the film on 8mm over the course of two years, literally did nearly everything himself on this lo-fi marvel.
After spending years working on a trilogy of blockbuster Spider-Man films, Sam Raimi returned to his roots for the SO MUCH fun "Drag Me to Hell" in 2009. While sure, it's slicker and more polished than the cabin trilogy ever was, it perfectly proves he hadn’t lost his signature style one bit.
With "The Cabin in the Woods" in 2012, the genre went self-referential as it tore down and built up the entire cabin horror trope with wild abandon, it wasn't just poking fun at cabin movies — it basically nuked the rulebook from orbit and dared you to complain about it.
Even a movie like "Deadstream," released in 2022, drags the Deadite mythos kicking and screaming into the found-footage/livestream era, showing us an influencer hell-bent on capturing a haunted house for social media with a level of intensity we haven’t seen in years.
And then there's the wild card that ties it all together, 2026 film "The Mummy", directed by Lee Cronin, and is confirmed to be apart of the same universe because the archaeologist character shares the surname of Beth from “Evil Dead Rise." Cronin has been very open about this connection and how the films share lore, the same cosmic forces, and most importantly, a Deadite-like sense of dark humor (like how your little piggies taste) and horrific glee (don't worry, it's fun to be dead).
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