Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Sisters Beth (Lily Sullivan) and Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) haven’t always seen eye to eye, historically, but when Beth has a problem, as she has at the beginning of the movie, she still comes back to Ellie – and Ellie’s kids Bridget (Gabrielle Echols), Danny (Morgan Davies) and Kassie (Nell Fisher). Right now, Ellie’s family has problems of their own, though: the father of the kids has left them, and the high rise they live in is going to be demolished in a month, with no new place to live on the horizon.

So the family reunion isn’t without its troubles. Troubles which will be rudely interrupted when an earthquake open ups a hidden bunker under the building and Danny grabs the grimoire stashed there in the hopes of selling it off to get everyone out of trouble. Soon deadites and fountains of blood will redecorate the building’s interior.

The new Evil Dead film is not at all the kind of film I’d have expected out of Lee Cronin. Where the director’s short films and his The Hole in the Ground are rather slow, cerebral and thoughtful, Evil Dead Rise is fast, bloody, and often wonderfully fucked up perfectly in keeping with the tradition of the franchise. Cronin turns out to be really good at this sort of thing, as well, timing shocks, freak-outs and nasty suspense masterfully, while keeping the characters interesting enough for him to be able to slow down strategically whenever necessary or useful to the film’s mood.

There are, of course, a lot of nods to the other films of the franchise here (there’s a particularly wonderful/creepy variant of the old “DEAD BY DAWN!”, turned into an actual chant here), but Cronin – who also scripted – also adds some flourishes of his own that manage to keep completely in the style of the series but also feel new and individual enough to move it forwards, in a much more organic way than the new Hellraiser tried and failed to do it. The final creature – to spoil that one would be a crime – is a great example for this. It’s certainly in the mind space Sam Raimi works in when doing horror, but it’s also something I really haven’t seen before, or indeed imagined to see in the fifth movie in a franchise that also already spawned a TV show.

For a movie that’s aiming for the mainstream, this can get surprisingly nasty – not just in the blood showers but also in its willingness to kill characters who would be taboo in most mass market fare, in its general sense of gruesomeness and in its sheer macabre visual imagination.

Between the crazy effects, the blood, and the horrific action, Cronin has also managed to include elements that resonate on a different level. Apart from being a movie about possession, blood and unpleasant transformations, this is also very much a film playing on a very basic human fear. To my eyes, it is not the “evil mother” thing certain people get so cranky about (because all mothers in real life are awesome I assume against better knowledge?) but rather the fear of your loved ones turning against you or changing beyond recognition, turning into monsters literal and metaphorical. There’s a certain perverse glee in the way Evil Dead Rise plays with this fear, first setting up family relations that are close but not too idyllic, and then destroying them in ways none of the characters deserve.

If you start thinking about it, Evil Dead Rise is really very dark indeed – it just puts this darkness into such a sweet mix of macabre and perversely fun carnage, not everyone watching will even notice that darkness.