Evil Dead Rise: Still Delivering the Demonic Goods, Now in a City Setting

By Thom Ernst

Rating: A-minus

If you were fortunate to have attended the promotional screening of Evil Dead Rise, you went home with a cheese grater.

It’s an unusual takeaway that won’t make sense unless you’ve seen the film. Once you have, you'll see that a cheese grater makes for a kind of squeamish sense. One that follows the logic of “Chekov’s gun,” which dictates if you introduce a cheese grater in the first act, you must use it in the next.

The same can be said of the woodchipper in the parking garage and the fabric sheers carelessly tossed aside: each item enticingly displayed to take root in the subconscious and later sprout, then bloom into a bloody beautiful mess.

Alyssa Sutherland, under the influence in Evil Dead Rise.

These items are early-scene promises carefully scattered to leave a message to fans that Evil Dead Rise—the fifth in a franchise that includes several sequels and one reboot—is dedicated to delivering the goods. And when it delivers, it delivers in buckets: buckets of fake blood to be precise. 1,720 gallons of it, according to director Lee Cronin.

The essentials of the franchise remain. There is still The Book of the Dead bound in human flesh, an incantation played in a tenor of religious fervour, and (ultimately) the transformed menace of a loved one as a demon happily exposing the vulnerabilities of it victims before tearing into their flesh.

But the franchise has dispensed with its campy origins. There are no skeletons dancing ballet in the woods, and no garden tools attached to dismembered limbs.

And yet the humour remains, only now there is an added charm missing from previous installments. That charm is courtesy of the movie’s protagonists, a typically atypical family, and their equally quirky neighbours. Including a lovelorn teen boy and an old dude with a shotgun.

The movie jumps in with title cards blazing off the screen and a killer opening that leaves the audience breathless and pumped for more. It’s one of the most exhilarating lead-ins to a movie seen in a long time—horror or otherwise.  The location then shifts from what has been the series trademark secluded cottage to a rundown tenement in downtown L.A.

It's here we meet the family, busily engaged in the routine of cohabitating.

The mother, Elle (Alyssa Sutherland) is engrossed in an art project, aware, but momentarily distracted from her children. Her eldest is Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) bummed that her t-shirt has not been washed.

“You know where the washing machine is,” her mother shouts.

Meanwhile, Danny (Morgan Davies) her preteen son samples vinyl on his turntable, while Kassie (Nell Fisher) the precocious baby of the family, removes the head of her doll with a pair of fabric scissors.

Enter Beth (Lily Sullivan) Elle’s estranged sister whose been too self-absorbed to notice that there’s been a recent and serious breakdown in the family dynamics. The first thirty minutes of Evil Dead Rise have more backstory than there is collectively in the previous four entries.

But then an earthquake exposes a hidden vault in the sub-basement of the tenement. In the vault lies The Book of the Dead, thought to be safely sealed and kept from ever endangering humanity—the same book first seen in director Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead.

Had Danny seen an Evil Dead movie, things might have been different. But ignorance and curiosity take hold while Bridget’s pleas to leave well enough alone go ignored. Soon the family plus a handful of neighbours, now trapped on the 14th floor with no escape, are exposed to a long-dormant demon that viciously attacks and possesses Elle before moving on to others.

Evil Dead Rise is cognizant of, though not limited to, fan expectations. The film doesn’t change the rules so much as revives them in unexpected ways.  The family dynamic marks a significant difference from prior Evil Dead films. And given the movie’s “no one is safe” policy leads to scenes that can sometimes feel tragic.

Evil Dead Rise is not a rehash of the films that preceded it (unlike Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2, which are essentially the same film made twice). But as much as tradition remains, so too, are there moments you won’t see coming. In a masterfully choreographed bit of horror, the carnage is viewed solely through the peephole of an apartment door, lending a helpless and warped perspective to an eyewitness account.

But there are flies in the ointment; establishing the perfect family by way of exploiting their imperfections feels coyishly misguided. And the ‘will they/won’t they’ tension of a hand slowly (so slowly) reaching to unlock a locked door feels overextended, just as faking out a child with a false scare (aside from being mean) feels contrived.

But these are minor glitches in a film that frequently exceeds expectations. 

Cronin, who is also credited as screenwriter, stockpiles the action with blatant reconstructions of scenes reminiscent of The Exorcist. It can make Evil Dead Rise feel like a movie racing against David Gordon Green’s upcoming Exorcist sequel to be the first to cross the possession-horror threshold.

And though Green’s Exorcist sequel is yet to be seen, Cronin's Evil Dead Rise has set the bar, and the bar is pretty high.

Evil Dead Rise. Directed by Lee Cronin. Stars Alyssa Sutherland, Gabrielle Echols, Morgan Davies, Nell Fisher, and Lily Sullivan. Evil Dead Rise opens in theatres Friday, April 21.