Certificate: 18 (strong bloody violence, gore)
Running Time: 97 mins
UK Distributor: Studiocanal
WHO’S IN IT?
Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, Nell Fisher, Mia Challis, Tai Wano, Jayden Daniels, Billy Reynolds-McCarthy
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Lee Cronin (director, writer), Rob Tapert (producer), Stephen McKeon (composer), Dave Garbett (cinematographer), Bryan Shaw (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A family is haunted and possessed by demonic entities in their city apartment…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON EVIL DEAD RISE?
More than forty years since director Sam Raimi first made a serious splash with his micro-budgeted horror film The Evil Dead (which Raimi soon followed up with Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness), and ten years since Fede Álvarez’s noble but middling remake, the Necronomicon has now been handed over to Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin. Despite having only one other feature to his name – the supernatural thriller The Hole in the Ground – Cronin has been tasked with once again revitalising a franchise that has largely laid dormant since Álvarez’s 2013 attempt, but with Evil Dead Rise he may have just figured out not just how to reinvent the classic formula for a modern audience, but also how to tread across newer and much more shocking territory that might leave you in utter disbelief at how Cronin was able to get away with it all.
It’s a serious return to form for the series, and an absolute cavalcade of impressive gore effects that gives the audience exactly what they want to see in an Evil Dead movie, and then some.
The action here is uprooted from the familiar cabin-in-the-woods setting – barring a decently subvertive, but honestly unnecessary, cold open – and placed in a rundown (and about to be demolished) apartment building in Los Angeles, where tattoo artist Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) lives with her children, teens Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Danny (Morgan Davies), and young Kassie (Nell Fisher). The family is suddenly paid a visit by Ellie’s estranged sister Beth (Lily Sullivan), a music technician who’s just found out she’s pregnant, but an earthquake leads the kids to discover – what else? – the Book of the Dead itself in their building’s basement. As you might expect, a horde of terrifying demons are unleashed as soon as the words of the ancient tome are read aloud, possessing whomever they desire and causing all sorts of gory mayhem, which the family must try however hard they can to survive the night.
As ever in the Evil Dead franchise, continuity is more of a light suggestion than anything else, so don’t expect Evil Dead Rise to directly tie into any of the previous movies aside from the singular sticking points (The Necronomicon! Deadites! Audio recordings that nobody until this film ever thinks to switch off before they utter the dooming words!). It goes along with how each film in this series, including each one in Raimi’s original trilogy and even Álvarez’s remake, has its own identity without straying too far away from the original template, and here Cronin embraces a tone that is much closer to the original but still going out of its way to do something different. The new setting keeps the sense of containment that prohibits characters from simply leaving (here, instead of a destroyed or flooded bridge, the lift is all banged up) as well as the unnerving claustrophobia within the walls of this small, dingy apartment, but also the moments of pitch-black comedy which bring a sense of liveliness to moments of sheer body horror. Cronin both honours the series’ legacy and progresses it, with an even balance of both horror and comedy which rarely if ever takes itself too seriously while additionally doing things that none of its predecessors perhaps ever considered doing.
For one, the inclusion of an actual family as potential victims of the body-possessing Deadites is a major step into uncharted territory for the series. Past Evil Dead movies have flirted with family ties before – the 2013 one, for instance, explicitly features a central brother-sister relationship – but never with actual children involved, which makes the stakes here feel all the more real this time around. There is never a doubt in your mind that the Deadites in Evil Dead Rise can go so far as to inhabit the bodies of minors, and have them commit some incredibly unhinged acts of violence either on other people or themselves (memorable household weapons of choice include a tattoo needle, scissors, and a cheese grater), and because you’ve spent enough time with this family to know and even like some of them, it’s all the more disturbing when you know that even kids aren’t safe from the wrath of these monstrous demons. Again, Cronin slyly lulls you into a false sense of security when it’s just the adults getting possessed – and props to performer Alyssa Sutherland for delivering a fantastic physical performance as one of the most genuinely creepy Deadites this series has produced to date – so that you become seriously concerned when it transpires that there are more potential victims half their age.
Cronin does not shy away from the series’ trademark level of gore either, resulting in perhaps the bloodiest entry of them all. As with all the other Evil Dead movies, the level of effects on display here is truly outstanding, with a mixture of practical prosthetics and only the faintest touch of CG trickery creating imagery and set pieces that rank among some of the most shocking since Raimi’s original. No spoilers here, but there is one major physical transformation towards the end that is straight out of a particularly messed-up David Cronenberg movie, and as a concept alone it is terrifying but also mesmerising to see how it is made to function in front of a camera. All the blood and body dismemberment you’ve come to expect in an Evil Dead movie is here as well, but unlike the 2013 version it never feels like it’s there just because it’s part of this particular franchise, and you actually do care about the people that it’s all happening to.
Evil Dead Rise isn’t a completely perfect movie – certain characters make a number of truly dumb decisions at various points, which almost makes you no longer care for some of them – but, like many of its predecessors, it is a hugely fun one. Fans of the series will go crazy for it, general horror fans will appreciate the level of gore being thrown at them, and it might even make a fan out of anyone who’s never seen any of the previous movies. It easily surpasses the remake (which, to reiterate, is mostly just fine) and lands straight in with Raimi’s classics as an all-out mix of bloody horror and gallows humour, for which Cronin should be immensely proud for having the blood and guts to compete with in the first place.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Evil Dead Rise is a tremendously entertaining revitalisation of the classic horror franchise, which filmmaker Lee Cronin honours the legacy of while also taking it to newer and even more shocking levels of gore and violence, crafting some of the series’ bloodiest and genuinely creepiest moments in the process that rival the all-out insanity of Sam Raimi’s earlier films.
