Movies & TV / Reviews

Ash vs. Evil Dead Review 3.9 “Judgement Day”

April 22, 2018 | Posted by Bryan Kristopowitz
Ash vs Evil Dead Judgement Day
8.5
The 411 Rating
Community Grade
12345678910
Your Grade
Loading...
Ash vs. Evil Dead Review 3.9 “Judgement Day”  

Ash vs. Evil Dead Review: 3.9: “Judgement Day”

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the review of the ninth episode of season 3 of the now officially cancelled Starz series Ash vs. Evil Dead. I’m Bryan Kristopowitz.

AshVsEvilDeadS3A

Yes, that’s right. It’s finally happened. It’s official. Ash vs. Evil Dead has been cancelled and will end with episode ten next week. Starz made it official this past Friday. The show will end after three years, thirty episodes, around fifteen hours of content. The original plan was for five seasons of Bruce Campbell’s Ash fighting the deadite menace and saving the world and whatnot, but that didn’t happen. We got three seasons instead. I guess we should all be thankful for that, since, heck, who thought we’d ever get any new Evil Dead in the first place? And we’ll have that to enjoy, along with the three movies and, to a lesser extent, the reboot, for years to come. At least we’ll have that, along with any comic books or other merchandise that decides to pop up.

I’m going to speak more about all of this in a different forum, in greater detail, at a later date. There are some things that I want to say, that I need to say, but I’m going to give it some time. Right now, it’s time to enjoy what we have left of the show and the characters and the Evil Dead universe. Let’s focus on that.

AshHasLeftTheBuilding

Goddamit, this sucks. This really, really sucks.

And now, the ninth episode of season three of Ash vs. Evil Dead.

AshVsEvilDeadS3E9B

Episode 9: Judgement Day

Directed by: Rick Jacobson
Written by: Rick Jacobson

(“Ash has left the building” image from Bruce Campbell’s Twitter page, which you can check out here. All other images courtesy of Starz)

Warning: This review contains spoilers.

Judgement Day starts with Ruby (Lucy Lawless) and the evil Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) torturing Knights of Sumeria group leader Zoe (Emilia Burns), bleeding her while she’s tied to a chair. The evil Kelly is then spreading that drawn blood all over the room. It’s at this point that we find out that Ruby has a plan to keep the supremely evil Dark Ones away, and it involves creating a “new page” of the Necronomicon. Using a piece of back skin from Zoe, Ruby hopes that the new page will give her the time she needs. After removing that piece of skin, though, Ruby and evil Kelly are not prepared for Zoe still being feisty and Zoe manages to break free from her chair and get away. Now, Zoe doesn’t get very far, but she does manage to go down fighting. Yes, Zoe, like her KoS colleagues, ends up getting destroyed by evil (the evil Kelly digs her fingers into Zoe’s eye sockets, a gross as hell practical special effect).

The scene then shifts to Ash (Bruce Campbell) conferring with his daughter Brandy (Arielle Carver-O’Neill) and his buddy Pablo (Ray Santiago) about what to do next. As far as Ash is concerned, the only way to end everything that’s been going on is to confront Ruby head on and kill her. Doing that is, obviously, easier said than done, but then what other real choice do they have? Pablo, via some sort of remote viewing power, watches the evil Kelly decimate Zoe and can actually see the evil spirit inside of Kelly. Pablo doesn’t want Ash to go after Ruby alone, but Ash is going to do what he wants to do because he’s Ash. He’s the only one who can defeat evil.

As Pablo deals with his remote viewing power, which seems to kick in at random points, Ash goes after Ruby. Before he leaves, though, Ash shows Brandy how to use his boomstick as she’ll need it for protection in the event that something comes after her (and let’s face it, something is going to come after her). Brandy would much rather fight alongside her father as she has a score to settle with Ruby, but she agrees to stay behind. So Ash goes after Ruby. Pablo finally breaks his remote viewing link and goes outside to check the sky. Clouds are forming. There’s something brewing in town. Is something trying to break through the rift?

Pablo hightails it to the hardware store basement and the rift entrance. He was right. Something is trying to break through the rift.

AshVsEvilDeadS3E9A

It’s the Dark Ones. Floating evil spirits shrouded in cloaks, just like the pictures in the Necronomicon show. Pablo tries to engage them, but they shrug him aside. They have other matters, other entities, to attend to. But why didn’t they kill Pablo? Shouldn’t the Dark Ones have destroyed him? Isn’t that what they do? The Dark Ones are attacking and influencing the people of Elk Grove, turning several into deadite type creatures (check out what happens in the bar).

Back at Ash’s house, as expected, something has come to attack Brandy. Not only are there deadites surrounding the house, there’s a “typical” evil entity, a fast- moving invisible thing that only Brandy can see or sense, on the premises. Brandy shoots at the entity with the boomstick, she runs, she doesn’t know what else to do. It’s terrifying. And what’s the deal with the evil goddamn phone?

Ruby is almost ready with the new Necronomicon page. The evil Kelly is still spreading blood all over the place. Will this scheme actually work? Before Ruby and evil Kelly can really find out, Ash shows up brandishing his chainsaw and ready to kick ass. He is ready for all of this Evil Dead shit to end. Ruby isn’t going to go down without fighting, though, especially against a dipshit like Ash. If she can’t kill Ash (she’s tried to kill him multiple times now and the bastard just won’t die) she’s going to try, one more time, to make a deal with him. The Dark Ones are coming.

Back at Ash’s house, Brandy is trying to figure out how to survive an Evil Dead attack. The boomstick has turned out to be useless and there don’t appear to be any useful weapons around her. The chainsaw is gone. There’s a table saw nearby but that would be ridiculous. Her phone is now also some sort of goddamn mutant thing with weird eyes. And what was the deal with that dream thing, where she loses her thumb and her phone starts sounding like her dead mother? Was that actually a dream? Just what the hell is going on here? Brandy finds a snow blower and uses it to go after the mutant phone deadite demon thing. Blood flies everywhere.

And then there’s a massive explosion in town. Holy shit!

Ash isn’t going to make a new deal with Ruby. Every deal he’s made with her has turned out badly for him. He’s going to kill her instead. So Ruby summons all of her own evil demon power and just kicks Ash’s ass. She rips the chainsaw from Ash’s stump and destroys it (Ash cries at the sight of his trusty chainsaw being crushed and demolished. The bitch even bends the saw blade! Goddamit!). The evil Kelly gets involved in the Ash beatdown, a thing that Ash is kind of into (he even says that he doesn’t know how he feels about Kelly beating him up. Is it a turn on, or a major turn on?). The evil Kelly goes to attack Ash’s face the way she attacked Zoe’s. And that’s when the Dark Ones appear.

The Dark Ones attack Ruby and the evil Kelly, drawing out the spirit inside Kelly’s body, Kaya (Chelsea Preston Crayford and, I assume, for the one nude backside scene, Danielle Cormack). Ruby tries to put up a fight against the Dark Ones, but they destroy her quickly, sucking out her life energy and turning her body into a pile of dried out bones. Kaya is destroyed, too. While all of this is going on, Ash watches his enemy die and he removes Kelly’s body from the room. Ash also grabs the Kandarian Dagger, which has been kicking around the area the entire episode. He can use the Dagger on the Dark Ones and whatever they send after him. And now that he has Kelly’s body, he can get her spirit out of the rift. Ash now also has the Necronomicon back, too.

Holy shit, this whole thing might work out for Ash.

It’s at this point that Ash uses the Necronomicon to activate Pablo’s remote viewing capabilities and tells him what he knows. Ruby is dead. He has Kelly’s body. He has the book back. He needs Pablo to open the rift so Kelly can come back. The Dark Ones are in the area, too. Pablo understands a good chunk of what Ash tells him, but the remote connection becomes tenuous quickly, and suddenly all of the positivity in the air turns to shit.

Ash starts running into deadites with the Delta. The deadites are scared? What? That happens when the Dark Ones are in town? Ash meets up with Pablo and finds out that Brandy, despite her injuries, is still alive and well. He gives Pablo the book for safe keeping, and almost immediately Pablo loses it. The Dark Ones show up again and take it.

And it’s at this point that the world changes. The governor of Michigan declares a state of emergency. There’s an earthquake in Elk Grove. A giant hole develops in the road. And a massive demonic hand pops up out of the hole.

A massive demonic hand? Ash is right in saying “Fuuuuck.” Because, Jesus Christ, it’s a massive demonic hand popping up out of the ground. How the hell is he, or anyone, going to fight off that?

And that’s where the episode ends. The series finale is going to have to be epic.

Judgement Day moves along at a quick pace and manages to pack in quite a bit of plot. There’s a bit with Zoe, in full deadite mode, attacking Ash that could play into the series finale since people who are attacked by deadites tend to take on deadite attributes at some point after the attack. The sequence where Brandy experiences her own Evil Dead situation, fighting off a demonic entity and having to use whatever is in the room to attack, is fun, especially with how it ends. The demon phone thing that she fights is weird as hell and doesn’t seem to fit in with the other monsters the characters fight (the creature is a little too cartoony up close) but it sort of works in the end anyway.

The big final fight between Ash and Ruby comes off as abbreviated, but then when she crushes the chainsaw and bends the blade you really feel Ash’s pain. He’s had that chainsaw for ages and managed to kill countless deadites with it. It’s damn sad to see it die.

I like the look of the Dark Ones, but I could see why some people might be turned off by them. They’re weird and cartoony, yes, but what they do is what matters, and after what they do to Ruby it’s obvious that you don’t want to mess with these things. As for the way they dispatch Ruby, it’s shocking. I’d imagine that, had the producers known that episode nine of season three, episode twenty-nine, would be the second to last episode of the show that Ruby’s death would have been a little more drawn out and brutal. But then watching a person get her life force sucked out and her body shrivel up is pretty damn nasty and it works. Would this have been the full on real deal death of Ruby had the show managed to snag a fourth season? Who knows? Killing the main villain this way, though, again, works. It’s gross.

Now, what the heck is going to happen with this gigantic demon thing that pops up out of the ground? What the heck is Ash going to do to kill it? Will he be able to kill it? And how is the presence of the National Guard (we see them in the preview for the finale) going to affect things? And when will Kelly come back? Will she be able to come back for the entire finale, or will she just pop up at the end?

Only one more episode to go. And then that’s it. The show will be over, and the Evil Dead franchise will go dormant. Will we get a happy ending? A cool ending? Will we even get an ending? We’ll find out next week.

Bring on episode ten, and then bring on the mourning. Ash vs. Evil Dead is almost over.

AshVsEvilDeadS3E9

8.5
The final score: review Very Good
The 411
Judgement Day is the second to last episode of the series and manages to pack in plenty of plot to set up the finale. The evil Ruby is destroyed, but there’s an even greater evil waiting in the wings. The sequence with Brandy having to deal with the evil dead by herself is pretty cool. And the Dark Ones, while cartoony looking, are incredibly dangerous. How are Ash, Pablo, and the other Ghostbeaters going to defeat evil in the end? Will they be able to? We’ll know in a week. The show is almost over.
legend