The 10 Most Brutal Kills In 'Evil Dead' That Will Leave You Squealing And Cheering

When it comes to the Evil Dead series, you know what to expect. Some fool decides to read from the Necronomicon, Deadites will begin to possess people, and there’s going to be a high body count. Between the six mainline Evil Dead movies, dozens upon dozens of people have been gruesomely killed, but all kills are not created equal. Some make you curl up into a ball at how disturbing they are. Some make you laugh and scream at how gory they are. But they’re almost always entertaining.

Evil Dead Burn (2026) continues that tradition of ensuring its cast is slaughtered by Deadites. So in celebration of more corpses being added to the series’ ever-growing body count, let’s take a look at which deaths are the very best. A lot goes into a good Evil Dead kill. Good special effects are always a plus, as is a copious amount of blood, and they have to be memorable. A whole lot of people are killed via shotgun blasts and chainsaws, but the very best add a little something extra to make it stand out, like a one-liner or some creative cinematography.

These are the kills that make Evil Dead the gore heaven that it is, and if you have HBO Max, then you too can revel in the kills that would make most casual filmgoers squirm and gag. 

10. Evil Ash (Army of Darkness)

Army of Darkness (1992) is, in many ways, the odd one out of the franchise. It’s the most overtly comedic film in the series, and its medieval setting, while unique, has its fans and its haters. It’s still a fun horror movie, especially for those who enjoyed Sam Raimi’s later film, Drag Me to Hell (2009), but as far as memorable kills go, it’s a bit lacking.

The exception to this is Evil Ash.

Evil Ash plagues and hounds Ash Williams for most of the film’s 81-minute runtime, culminating in a battle in a medieval fortress. By this point, Evil Ash is a decayed, stop-motion skeleton, and taunts Ash as the battle seems all but lost for our heroes. Ash’s response? Launch the catapult Evil Ash is standing on, and watch him shoot off to the sky and explode like he’s Team Rocket from Pokémon (1997).

Is it the most satisfying kill? No, but Evil Ash’s reaction to being launched is genuinely funny, and it’s the high point of a movie that, despite having the largest kill count in the series, doesn’t have too many memorable kills. At least it’s funny!

9. Gabriel (Evil Dead Rise)

What makes Evil Dead Rise (2023) such an effective horror film is how well it blends its themes. This is a movie about family and serves as a mirror opposite to Evil Dead Burn and its spiteful characters. Many of the film’s most effective moments are watching the members of the Bixler family turn against one another. 

Gabriel’s death is not one of those emotionally gripping moments. Gabriel is one of Ellie Bixler’s neighbors, and, thinking that she’s dead, moves her corpse into his apartment. Unfortunately for him, she isn’t and chews his eyeball out of his head. It’s a great homage to Evil Dead II, but Rise doesn’t play it for laughs. It’s disgusting to watch, and Gabriel’s constant screams only add to the suffering.

By the time he gets his throat ripped out, it almost feels like a mercy killing, but even then, it’s made extra horrifying because of how we watch Ellie do so through the front door’s peephole, giving us an intimate look at just how painful it is. It’s definitely traumatizing for the kids watching on the other side, but their night only gets worse from there on out.

8. Deadite Scotty & Cheryl (The Evil Dead)

Made on a budget of $375,000, Sam Raimi faced a lot of challenges making The Evil Dead (1981). Much like other low-budget horror movies of the era, like Re-Animator (1985), Raimi had to get creative with his kills, and the death of Deadite Scotty and Cheryl was a perfect example of this.

Once Ash discovers that damaging the Necronomicon can kill the Deadites, he throws the book into the fireplace and watches as it and the two Deadites attacking him begin to disintegrate. It’s the process itself that’s especially fantastic. Raimi created the sequence with stop-motion, and so we watch in painstaking detail each of the Deadites rotting and decomposing in front of our very eyes.

The flesh falls off them, muscles and skin descend, and the resulting make-up and special effects for what’s left of the human actors make the Deadites look worse than any zombie or monster could be. By today’s standards, it may not be as bloody as the franchise is used to, but it’s still a spectacle if you’re a fan of practical special effects. 

7. Eric (Evil Dead) 

You really have to feel for Eric. Throughout Evil Dead (2013), he’s relentlessly attacked by every Deadite in the cabin and somehow keeps getting back up. His death itself isn’t all that memorable since he dies from bleeding out (lame), but the injuries he sustains all lead to his death, so technically, it counts, because hoo boy does Eric suffer!

He’s attacked by three different Deadites over the course of the film, each leaving him more worse for wear. At first, a Deadite stabs him a ton with a dirty syringe, and the only reason it doesn’t stab his eye out is because of his absurdly thick glasses. After that, he gets turned into a human pincushion by a Deadite with a nail gun. Then he gets beaten within an inch of his life with a crowbar, and if that wasn’t enough, he’s mauled by a Deadite in the basement.

One of those would be a great kill on its own, but together, it makes Eric into one of the most abused victims in the series. Considering how none of those actually killed him, and he’s only here on this list because of a technicality, he can’t go any higher.

6. Deadite Thya (Evil Dead Burns)

As the latest entry in the 45-year-old series, Evil Dead Burn was bound to have some creative and gruesome kills during its nearly two-hour runtime. While it didn’t have too many particularly nasty kills, all of the marketing showcased the murder potential of the Price family dishwasher, and it did not disappoint.

Funnily enough, the dishwasher, at least as it’s shown in the trailer, wasn’t actually a murder tool. Deadite Thya shoves her husband Joseph onto it and proceeds to press him into it, but it doesn’t kill him. Instead, after Thya taunts the surviving Price family members, Joseph takes the dishwasher cover and smashes her head in again and again and again and again until she’s pasted on the ground.

What really elevates it as the best kill from the movie is how Joseph completely loses it on her, attacking her relentlessly beyond the point of reason. Blood everywhere, Joseph mentally broken, and one dead Deadite. Remember, folks, when putting your knives in the dishwasher, put them in blade side down!

5. Deadite Linda (Evil Dead II)

There was a certain element of tragedy that came with Deadite Thya’s death. Joseph didn’t want to kill her, but he was left with no choice. Heartbreaking moments like that are common in Evil Dead, but they weren’t done as well as in Evil Dead II (1987) with Linda, Ash’s girlfriend.

While she was seemingly killed by decapitation in the first film, her severed head was still alive and kicking. So he takes her to the shed and prepares to kill her, only for the Deadite to try to trick Ash by pretending to be Linda before she was turned. It’s a sad moment as she begs him, but watching Ash tearfully dismember her head was simply fantastic.

What makes the moment even better is that we never see Ash do the deed. We see shadows of him and shots of the hanging lightbulb as it gets splattered by blood. Doing so lets the viewer’s imagination run wild with what exactly is happening in that shed. Yes, it was done that way so that Raimi wouldn’t have to deal with the censors, but he made it work and turned it into one of the franchise’s best kills.

4. The Teenager (Evil Dead)

Out of all of the kills on this list, this one may be the most forgotten. Recent Evil Dead movies have opted to have a mostly unrelated cold open, but none of them can compare to the opening for the Evil Dead remake. 

Without any context, we see people chasing a girl in the woods, capturing her, and preparing to burn her at the stake. It seems pretty cultish at first, and definitely is confusing even for veterans, but it doesn’t take long for the Deadite in control of the girl to start lashing out, causing her father to set her on fire and then blow her heart off with a shotgun blast.

It’s a fantastic intro and one that really does cement the remake as being a much darker take on the original film. The fire effects look especially painful, and that shotgun blast has chunky sound design that’s just so satisfying to watch. It’s the kind of moment that is perfect on its own, and if it were released as an independent short film, it would be praised to high heaven. That’s how you know a kill is good.

3. The Abomination (Evil Dead)

Fede Alvarez did a wonderful job modernizing the series with the 2013 remake. Evil Dead was always a violent series, but the remake took it to another level, where the amount of blood is straight-up dizzying, and nothing captured that more than the final fight against the Abomination.

Teased throughout the film, the Abomination is the result of five souls being claimed by the Necronomicon. It crawls up from the ground, and while it may look like protagonist Mia, it’s far, far more powerful. Mia and the Abomination duke it out, and while both of them lose some limbs over the fight, Mia is able to come out on top with a solid one-liner and then vivisecting it while a storm of blood rains down around her.

I’m not gonna lie, that kill is pretty metal. You can’t help but scream with Mia as she shoves the chainsaw down the creature’s chest while being sprayed with blood. It’s excessively violent and is probably the most over-the-top kill in the franchise’s history, feeling more like a kill you would see in Terrifier 2 (2022), but it’s hard not to cheer as you’re watching the bloodshed.

2. Deadite Henrietta (Evil Dead II)

In a lot of ways, Deadite Henrietta is THE Deadite all Deadites aspire to. She’s the Deadite locked in the cellar in Evil Dead II, shouting “Dead by dawn,” which has become a catchphrase of sorts for them. She’s terrifying, and she’s one of the best foes Ash has had to deal with.

She’s a constant threat in Evil Dead II, and even though she’s chained up in the basement, she still manages to make life hell for everyone, like killing Jake in a fountain of blood (consider his death an honorable mention). When she finally fights Ash, it’s a straight-up brawl. She flies around and wails on him, transforms into a disgusting creature, and even when Ash slices her head off with a chainsaw, she’s still screaming that she’ll swallow Ash’s soul. His response? Cocks his shotgun, says “Swallow this,” and blows her to kingdom come.

Peak horror kill. No notes. The mixture of practical effects and puppetry made her all the more impressive, and she even farts when she dies! Her death is as legendary as the head explosion from Scanners (1981) and has helped define not just Evil Dead II, but the franchise at large.

1. The Marauder (Evil Dead Rise)

The modern Evil Dead movies like to build to one big Deadite threat for our hero to face. The Abomination in Evil Dead. Deadite Will in Evil Dead Burn. But Evil Dead Rise did it best with the Marauder.

From a design perspective, it looks awesome. It’s an amalgamation of Ellie and her family fused into this lumbering creature on the prowl for Beth and Kassie. Eventually, it dies in the best way an ungodly demon can be killed: fed into a wood chipper. Blood, viscera, screams, and carnage ensue, and it’s an absolute delight to watch all of it unfold at once. The Abomination died in a similarly brutal way, but the design of the Marauder made its death more memorable. It’s a giant spider-like mass of flesh!

Plus, a wood chipper is a more ostentatious tool for murder than a chainsaw. It’s pretty on-the-nose symbolism for Beth’s trepidation towards family, but it elevates the Marauder above the standard Deadite fare. Add in a great one-liner by Beth before the Marauder’s death, and one last taunt from Deadite Ellie, and you have the most vicious and satisfying kill in all of Evil Dead history.