Ash vs. Evil Dead - "From Beyond Books"

Ash vs. Evil Dead is a show with a lot of moving parts. We have our trio of misfits, the rogue cop trying to piece together what happened to her partner, and a mysterious woman who seems to be hip to all that’s going on. As the show jumps from one story to another, we can’t help but wonder when these three arcs are going to collide, undoubtedly with buckets of blood to show for it. In “From Beyond Books”, the moment of impact gets a little closer. In the cold open, the audience finally gets to see Lucy Lawless kick some Deadite ass and rock some pretty serious driving gloves to boot. After visiting Kelly's parents house and beating some intell out of her undead father, she's hell bent on finding Ash and we aren't quite sure why yet.

As promised at the end of last week’s episode (and in this week’s title) our heroes have finally made it to From Beyond Books, where they are hoping to get some answers from the one man on Earth who can read and speak Kandarian, Lionel Hawkins. Determined to find some sort of mythical “reset button” that will send the Evil back to where it came from, Ash asks Lionel to summon one of the lowlier demons in the hopes that it will give them a hint—and all together terrible plan from just about any angle—and carnage ensues.

For a show that has had two incredibly strong episodes, Ash vs. Evil Dead fell a bit short this week, for a couple of reasons. First, the pacing felt a little off. This is a show that has managed thus far to stretch a story from a film format to TV without showing stretch marks and this is horror no less (just ask MTV Scream how hard that is to do). Where the first two episodes had gory fight scenes and lulls full of fun dialogue, this movie had relatively little of either. Aside from some stand out lines—including one about being an “alone wolf—the charm was not always there this week and the middle part of the episode seemed a little flat. This episode also promised a showdown between Detective Fisher and Ash that ended up being pretty shortlived. Clearly there will be more to come.

The bigger issue, in any property that bears the banner of Evil Dead, was the overuse of CGI. I won’t pontificate on the rise of technology, or how it has led to the relative extinction of practical effects, because it’s an argument that most film fans are aware of, and I could go on for hours. What I will say is that though there were some great visuals in this episode (particularly in the case of the demon they summoned) there were also some weak ones (like the zapping of Ash and Pablo’s head’s and the zoom in to the CGI blood vessels bursting in CGI brains) that felt like they would have been better replaced with just about anything else. In a series that is synonymous with flesh and blood effects (pun intended), it rang a bit untrue.

That being said, this episode was not bad. The series simply set a high bar for itself and didn't quite clear it this time around. So we, like Ash, Pablo, and Kelly, will have to collect ourselves and regroup. See you all next week!

Lasting Thought: The evil sheep embrio is exactly the kind of thing that makes this show great.

Sophie

Contributor

Sophie's introduction into the magic that is the horror genre was watching Halloween at a party in high school, and since then she's never looked back. She may be the wimpiest horror fan you have ever met, but she won't ever let that stop her!