EVIL DEAD RISE: The Horror Bar Has Been Raised

The original batch of Evil Dead movies changed my life in so many ways, the biggest of which was my becoming a lifelong fan of horror films. Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell took tiny budgets and crafted what many people (including myself) call masterpieces in the horror genre. This isn’t disputable. When Evil Dead (2013) came around I was more than a little bit worried that they would ruin something I held so dear until I found out that Raimi was involved. It had to have his stamp and it did. The film was fantastic, Fede Alvarez took what came before and made an amazing contribution to the lore. Now it’s Lee Cronin‘s turn to bring the deadites out to play in all the blood and gore and grossness that we’ve come to love.

We begin with a perfect misdirect by the director Lee Cronin. It was a tracking shot through the woods, the kind of tracking shot that we know means a deadite is searching for a victim. As the shot ends above a dock, we discover that it was not a deadite at all but a drone. It expertly uses our expectations against us by subverting what would normally happen. I instantly knew this was going to be a wild ride where I couldn’t trust what I thought should happen based on the past, it immediately freed me to just watch and enjoy the surprises without expectation.

After the dock, we are shoved one day into the past, many miles away, to an apartment building that has seen better days. It’s here that we meet our main players. Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) is a newly single mother to three kids who is barely getting by. Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) is the oldest daughter and seems to like to poke at Ellie for their current state of events. Danny (Morgan Davies) is a son who is only worried about what he wants to worry about and that seems to be music. He has an impressive record collection. Then there’s Kassie (Nell Fisher) who is the youngest and just wants everybody to get along. Pretty quickly Beth (Lily Sullivan), Ellie’s sister, shows up to ask for advice. She’s pregnant and doesn’t know what to do.

Everybody dead by dawn

One of the beautiful things that this movie does is paint everyone as fully realized people. They aren’t just characters, everybody has their own something going on. Cronin did an amazing job of fleshing everyone out very quickly (in the first 30 minutes) so that by the time the earthquake comes and opens the hole in the parking garage we are already invested in them. Of course, that hole is a problem and Danny decides (like any teenage boy) that he wants to explore it. The apartment is built on the site of an old bank and what he finds inside is what pushes the entire narrative forward. Old records and one of the three Necronomicons are brought out of the long-abandoned vault and straight to their apartment. Shake my whole head, Danny.

The camera work in this film is perfect especially when it comes to an Evil Dead movie. Cronin made sure to drop in plenty of callbacks to the previous Raimi work and it’s always a welcome choice. Cinematographer Dave Garbett does a fantastic job of emulating that style so that you’re never in doubt if you’re watching a movie in that universe. Besides the camerawork being exquisite the film is absolutely gorgeous to look at. The contrasting lights and darks as well as the way the colors are used, enhance everything. Even looking at the many… many gross things they show us, it just looks beautiful.

After getting the Necronomicon and the records back to his room, as anyone who loves music would do, Danny starts leafing through the pages made of human skin and listening to the tracks (recordings from the 1920s of a man who was trying to translate the book). After the famous words are spoken, all bets are off. It’s too late for any of them and the first to become a deadite is momma, Ellie. Bridget warned Danny to put it back and leave it alone, but what teenage boy is going to listen to his sister? Once Ellie starts her evil tirade the movie doesn’t let up. From that point until the end of the film, it’s nonstop horror greatness while sister Beth tries to save them all.

Come get some

This film is highly inventive in the way it attempts to scare us, some of the things we’ve seen in the past are definitely used against us on more than one occasion. A few of the scariest things that happen in the film aren’t even the violence, it’s the dialogue. Truly horrific things were spoken to the point where it didn’t matter what we were looking at, it was unsettling. I mean this as a compliment, more than once the words a character would speak made me shutter more than the accompanying visual. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of things that made my skin crawl visually, I’m just saying the writing was that good. One line that really stood out happened while Bridget was eating a glass bottle, she said, “I’ve got to kill the creepy-crawlies that get inside my tummy.” See what I mean?

This film was full of amazing callbacks and the line that is uttered in the final climactic battle literally made me cheer. I won’t ruin it here but if you’re a fan of the originals, the last ten minutes were written just for you. Of course, without giving away the full circle moment, the film left itself wide open for a sequel. I’m not even mad about that. If they can keep making these to this level of greatness, I’d pay to see 100 more. When you go to see an Evil Dead movie you kind of have an idea of what you’re in for, and we get that, but Evil Dead Rise also gave us so much more. It was a fun and inventive, blood-filled, horror gorefest and if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to watch it again.

Evil Dead Rise was released on April 21, 2023!

Watch Evil Dead Rise