How does one rank a modern Evil Dead film? Their broad goals are almost always the same, pulling from a similar toolbox to craft a gruesome new experience. Evil Dead Rise sets out to capture the carnival spook-house fun of the original film, along with the emotional weight of the 2013 remake. It largely succeeds, providing anyone who enjoyed either of those films everything they could ask for and more.
The unenviable position of following both Sam Raimi and Fede Álvarez has been filled by Irish writer/director Lee Cronin. Cronin's first feature was a haunting gothic mystery about parenting called The Hole in the Ground. Elements of that film clearly inspired his addition to the Evil Dead canon.
Much has been made of the bizarre genre trajectory of the Evil Dead franchise. The 1981 original was a campy gore-fest, the second mixed in a bit more snarky comedy, and Army of Darkness boldly created a new dark fantasy action subgenre. As the franchise attempts to reinvent itself once more, WB returns to square one with another solid entry. Rise was the eventual compromise between unresolved schemes to create a sequel to Álvarez's film, a direct sequel to Army of Darkness, and a fourth season of the Ash vs. Evil Dead series. This film doesn't directly invalidate any of those options, by the way. The canon of the franchise is so big and so open that its future could come in any number of new forms.
Evil Dead Rise opens with a vicious any% speedrun of the traditional Evil Dead experience. A group of teens hangs out at a cabin in the woods, one of them gets sick, and everyone dies. It's a good way to set the tone if nothing else. This is a world in which no one ever really wins, they just survive long enough to pass the plague onto someone else. This entry's unfortunate band of victims is a small charming family living in a dilapidated Los Angeles apartment. Single mom Ellie struggles to raise her three kids, Danny, Bridget, and Kassie, after being abandoned by her husband and forced out of her home. When her sister Beth returns from her world tour as a rock band's roadie, the air is tense with regret and frustration. Suddenly, a massive earthquake opens the building, revealing a cache of distinctly haunted-looking artifacts. When one of the kids makes the go-to mistake of the franchise, Beth becomes the only thing protecting them all from their possessed mom.
Evil Dead Rise delivers in every way it needs to. Its characters are immediately identifiable, with weird sharp edges that make them feel starkly real. The first twenty or thirty minutes of the piece, barring the initial short horror film that makes up the opening titles, do a great job of loading the various Chekhov's guns for the following cascade of violence. Once the big bad book escapes the bank vault it's been held in for god knows how long, the family drama easily slips away to be used as a taunt by the all-powerful adversary. The rules fit well enough with those of previous entries, not that there's a particularly strict canon to violate in the first place. The first act is an exercise in preparation, but it's well worth it when things get rough.
This film's tiny cast carries many of the quiet moments on their shoulders. Lily Sullivan plays the unlikely hero, a conflicted young lady with a distant connection to her family and a big new problem on the way. She'll be unfavorably compared to Bruce Campbell's Ash by many, but even when she overtly references the franchise's original hero, she's not working with the same sense of humor. Instead of the charming cartoon character Ash grew into over three films, Beth is a real person dealing with overwhelming pressure until she breaks. Alyssa Sutherland spends most of the movie screaming obscenities and attacking her neighbors as Ellie, but she pulls off both sides of the character. She's genuinely threatening, especially since her main prey happens to be her beloved kids. Speaking of the kids, Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, and newcomer Nell Fisher are solid young performers. The family unit is charmingly abnormal, and each kid seems to fit well into it.
Everyone knows what they're in for when they sign up for any film with Evil and Dead in the title. Violence, blood, screaming, death, one-liners, roll credits. It's not formulaic, it's reconstructive. Evil Dead implies certain things, Rise is just an experiment in moving the standard order of business into a new world. Not just into a new physical location, but into a new family dynamic. The question being implicitly asked is whether the puzzle pieces that make up Evil Dead's identity as a franchise can be mixed, matched, reordered, and relocated. The answer, it turns out, is an emphatic yes. So long as they've got a great cast, solid gore effects, and a director with an eye for the franchise's unique style, they can make an Evil Dead. Rise checks every box and has fun while doing it. Anyone with a fondness for the franchise will enjoy Evil DeadRise. It's the franchise that just won't die, and fans should be thrilled to see it crawl back out of its shiny new grave.
Evil Dead Rise
The Evil Dead franchise continues with Evil Dead Rise, a dark fantasy/horror film written and directed by Lee Cronin. This fifth entry in the Evil Dead named series follows two sisters, played by Alyssa Sutherland and Lily Sullivan, as they try to survive a demonic assault from a Deadite. Beth (Sullivan) heads on a road trip to visit her sister Ellie (Sutherland) and her children. However, when the Necronomicon is discovered in Ellie's L.A. apartment building, the Deadites rise back from their demonic realm and begin to bring hell back to earth once again. Evil Dead Rise, initially an HBO Max streaming exclusive, instead arrived in theaters on April 21, 2023.