Evil Dead

Few horror franchises have shape-shifted as wildly as Evil Dead. Sam Raimi's series began with the scrappy proof-of-concept short Within the Woods and the genuinely nasty 1981 original, then swerved into slapstick with Evil Dead II and the medieval comedy of Army of Darkness, turning Bruce Campbell's Ash into a horror-comedy icon.

The brand splits cleanly across continuities. The Starz series Ash vs Evil Dead continued Ash's story, while a separate, grimmer film line (the 2013 remake, Evil Dead Rise, and further entries) drops the jokes and recommits to dread. Games from Regeneration to Evil Dead: The Game keep the chainsaw running. The throughline is the Necronomicon and a tone that can pivot from terror to farce within a single scene.

The Evil Dead franchise spans 1 series, 2 games, 8 films in the CrossBinge catalog.