Evil Dead: How Deadite Possession Really Works

One thing that has never really been made clear in the Evil Dead franchise is how exactly one is possessed by the deadites, so how does it work? The deadites are the demonic beings who appear throughout the Evil Dead franchise and are evil, mischievous spirits who take possession of human beings. They’re sadistic creatures who enjoy tormenting or torturing the living and the only way to kill them is via bodily dismemberment.

When franchise hero Ash (Bruce Campbell) first encountered the deadites in the original Evil Dead, he lost his best friends, his sister and his girlfriend Linda when the beings were unleashed from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, AKA The Book Of The Dead. While his companions get taken over throughout the story, Ash himself somehow avoids possession. The first deadite viewers meet is the one that takes over Ash’s sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), who was the victim of the movie’s now-notorious tree rape sequence. Following Cheryl, it appears every character who is subsequently possessed is either wounded or at the point of death when they are taken over.

Scotty is essentially drawing his last breath when he is zombified, while Linda invites the entities in while she is passed out from the pencil wound to her ankle. Though she is not mortally wounded, this speaks to the second possible source of possession in Evil Dead; strength of character. Linda is not particularly strong-willed, which may have allowed the demons to take hold as she wasn’t able to fight off their possession. Ash, in comparison, is later possessed in Evil Dead II for a time and this first happens when he seemingly drowns in muddy water. Sunlight quickly banishes the evil from Ash, but when he’s later taken over again he regains his humanity and pushes the demons out when he finds Linda’s necklace, which he had given to her as a gift. Being able to regain his soul through sheer force of will might be one reason Ash is named the Chosen One.

These ideas continue in Army Of Darkness and Ash Vs Evil Dead, where viewers are introduced to characters who share Ash’s strength and can fight off possession because of their inner strength or lack of mortal wounds. Kelly and Pablo, like Ash, are possessed by the entity but eventually find their way back to humanity, but with lingering effects. Ash’s cop friend, Amanda, is not so lucky as she is impaled and bleeds out, becoming a deadite at the point of death. In Army Of Darkness, Sheila is one of the few characters who is able to survive possession as well. She is turned by Bad Ash, a mutated, somewhat cloned copy of the hero after he kisses her and she becomes his deadite queen. In this case, she does not necessarily fight off the entity but is saved when Ash destroys the evil and erases its effects on the land. The Evil Dead remake’s Mia isn’t able to fight off her possession, so her brother literally has to bury her alive and then revive her in order to save her soul.

Obviously, the Necronomicon makes its own rules but is seemingly unable to simply possess a human unless that person is dying or lacks the inner strength to fight back. It also has the ability to possess inanimate objects too, with such examples as a mounted deer head, a Little Lorie doll, and even Ash’s severed hand. So, like becoming a zombie, there are methods to Evil Dead’s deadite possession, even if none of the movies necessarily spell out the logic. The Evil Dead, however, thrives on creativity so these “rules” could most likely change at the drop of a hat – one that’s still attached to a severed head.

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