Evil Dead Reboot Director Reveals Alternate Ending Had a “Bomb of Blood”

The 2013 remake of Evil Dead honored the source material in a number of ways, while also making various deviations, with director Fede Alvarez recently confirming that his original plan for its ending featured lead character Mia (Jane Levy) exploding in a “bomb of blood.” The theatrical ending sees Mia leaving the cabin where she and her friends fell victim to demonic forces, while an alternate, uncut version of the film sees the evil catch up with her. Things got even more gruesome in the reboot’s script, with it being original director Sam Raimi who suggested things end on a different note.

“[Mia] was going to walk out of the house, she’s limping away from the house and suddenly the force – the crazy camera running through the woods – would come out of the house, she would turn around, scream, and that would be it, that would be the end of it,” Alvarez shared with Bloody Disgusting‘s The Boo Crew podcast. “In the script, we went a little bit further and we say, ‘Well, that’s what we saw in the original movie, so I think we should see more this time.’ So we will do this shot, and after she turns and screams, we will see what happened to her. It was written as she levitates for the first time – because you never see levitation in the movie. It was kind of the rules of [our] Evil Dead, to never see anything that tells you right away that you’re in a supernatural world. So no one floats [in] Evil Dead. But in the last moment, she will float.”

In both films, a group of friends goes to a cabin in the woods and, through the accidental power of the Necronomicon, become ravaged by supernatural forces. The theatrical ending of the reboot ends on a more ambiguous note, while the original script called for the ending to replicate the original finale while also taking things to an entirely new level. When the evil finally overcomes Mia, her body would become “all tensed up like Exorcist-style” before being ripped apart, ultimately exploding “into this bomb of blood.”

These plans resulted in a discussion between Alvarez and Raimi, with the original director noting that Mia was a much more sympathetic character, while Bruce Campbell’s Ash from the original series seemingly deserved his potential demise. With Ash surviving for two sequels and a TV series, clearly things were slightly modified from that original vision.

Raimi and Campbell have both teased that a new Evil Dead was on the way, with the only confirmed details being that a new filmmaker was set to take on the mythology.

Would you have liked to have seen this original ending? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!