The Movie Waffler TV Waffle - ASH VS EVIL DEAD Season 2, Episode 6: Trapped Inside | The Movie Waffler

TV Waffle - ASH VS EVIL DEAD Season 2, Episode 6: Trapped Inside

Ash's sister Cheryl returns in Deadite form.






Review by Eric Hillis (@hilliseric)


Ash vs Evil Dead evoked Sam Raimi's original 1982 movie this week with the return of actress Ellen Sandweiss in the role of Ash's ill-fated sister Cheryl. You'll recall Cheryl was the victim of the infamous tree-rape, the set-piece that caused Evil Dead to be added to the UK Video Nasties list. Ironically, had the movie not made the list, it likely wouldn't have found the cult audience it did, so in some ways Raimi owes his career to the collaboration of Sandweiss. Fitting then she should return for the franchise's second time in the pop culture sun, following a bit part in the Season One opener El Jefe.


We also saw the return of those classic subjective 'Evil' steadicam shots, though Raimi didn't have access to a steadicam back in '82, and achieved the effect by instead strapping the camera to a plank of wood. Oddly, these shots weren't accompanied by the usual manic sound effect we associate them with this time out.

The target of the roaming evil was Ash's (Bruce Campbell) family home, specifically Cheryl's old bedroom, where blood started oozing out of her portrait before she returned in Deadite form to attack her brother, killing poor old Chet (Ted Raimi), who it seems was once her boyfriend, along the way.


The bulk of the episode saw Ash battling Cheryl, showing little in the way of sentimentality for his sister at this point. Meanwhile, Kelly (Dana De Lorenzo) and Ash's old girlfriend Linda (Michelle Hurd) were forced to defend the Williams' home from the attentions of an angry shotgun wielding mob of locals, who blame Ash for the recent spate of violence their town has been subjected to. Among the mob was the demon Baal, disguised as a random middle-aged woman.

At the same time, Ruby (Lucy Lawless) attempts to summon a spell to banish Baal back to whence he came, hell itself, from the Necronomicon-possessed body of Pablo (Ray Santiago).


Where the previous episodes felt like standalone mini horror movies, riffing on John Carpenter's Christine and The Thing, Trapped Inside juggles too many balls with its three separate sub-plots, none of which are particularly compelling. It's arguably the weakest episode of this sophomore season, with an uninspired script by TV journeyman James E Eagan and equally bland staging of the action by director Mark Beesley, who returns to helm next week's episode. The good news on the direction front is that the talented Tony Tilse returns in two episodes time for an installment intriguingly titled Ashy Slashy.