THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS.
by Jarrod Jones. Evil Dead is still adapting to the times. Does it need to? The manic independent energy of Sam Raimi’s horror trilogy has given way to more grimly realized studio joints that include obligatory callbacks to the influential 1981 film and chase the current pop-horror hits. Fede Álvarez’s 2013 Evil Dead remake matched the torture-porn grime of Hostel and Saw and landed somewhere in that nebulous spectrum of quality between other cult horror redos like I Spit On Your Grave (2010) and The Last House on the Left (2009).
Evil Dead Rise shares the same grime and gloominess as Álvarez’s film, though it’s cribbing imagery from more cerebral (or cerebral-adjacent) horror. It has one of those triangle cabins we’ve seen in both Midsommar and Mandy, whose sustained ubiquity implies that log cabins have fallen out of fashion. There’s also an egregious reference to The Shining. A more pertinent influence to the series’ much-touted location change is Jason Takes Manhattan, which tossed out the Crystal Lake setting of Friday the 13th in favor of the big city; Evil Dead Rise follows suit. Goodbye, cabin in the woods. Hello, high-rise building in Los Angeles (really New Zealand, but whatever). The deadites are moving on up.
What’s innovative about Evil Dead Rise — beyond its urban locale — is its cast. There are kids in this. Nell Fisher plays Sutherland’s youngest daughter Kassie, and she’s quite good at it. When her mom becomes possessed by an outright mean deadite, Kassie’s innocence gives way to survival instinct. (“Am I dead?” she asks, half-lidded, in one of the movie’s better moments.) The two older kids, played by Morgan Davies and Gabrielle Echols, spend a lot of time reacting to horrific sequences but never seem to calibrate their reactions higher than mild concern. I blame the director for that.
Lee Cronin, who also made 2019’s The Hole in the Ground, wrings some joy out of flinging his cameras around Raimi-style when the fur begins to fly. He’s inventive with the limited space of his one-apartment setting, too; the front door peephole gets a lot of mileage, and Sutherland is at her most effective when viewed through a fisheye lens. His approach to the series’ carnage is appropriately wild. Cronin’s attention to character work, however, is less inspired. (I know what some of you might be thinking: “It’s a horror movie, so what.” I’m getting to that.)
The film begins with what turns out to be a pointless bookending device so far removed from its central drama that I am in awe that this cleared the editing stage. The sequence, set in that triangle cabin I mentioned, pays homage to Raimi’s first two Evil Dead films yet contrasts harshly with the film’s otherwise ambitious and gorgeous urban production design. It also takes precious screen time away from the pre-splatter drama of Cronin’s leads, so Beth (Lily Sullivan) and especially her sister Ellie (Sutherland) are rendered only with the thinnest strokes. Ellie’s a cool tattoo artist, and Beth is a guitar technician. Ellie’s kids are also gifted with pursuits instead of personalities — though Fisher’s character chops the head off of a doll and impales it on a protective stick she calls “Staff-inie.” That’s something, at least.
Evil Dead Rise uses the concept of motherhood to give it depth. Álvarez’s remake tinkered with themes, too; heroin abuse and mental disorders were demons to be defeated, which conjured a tinge (just a tinge!) of tragedy for the brother/sister characters of that film. Here, Sullivan’s character discovers she’s pregnant, and it seems like she’s come to her sister’s kid-festooned home with the intention of putting an end to it with Ellie’s support. Guess what happens. Ellie’s family issues, and whatever beef she may have with her sister (the word “groupie” gets thrown around), are so underdeveloped that when the demon who possesses Ellie begins to hurl vicious epithets at her family, they don’t have any bite.
When it comes time to include Evil Dead iconographies like the Necronomicon and the series’ ubiquitous chainsaw, Cronin seems unenthusiastic. The flesh-bound tome has grown two beastly rows of dagger-sharp teeth, but the film’s fleeting glimpses at its bloody interiors come off like cartoony sketchbook riffs on old EC Comics stuff. Its deadite-stirring words aren’t read aloud but come from a creepy vinyl recording. A few characters repeatedly invoke Evil Dead 2 with the phrase “dead by dawn” and I rolled my eyes. When that iconic monster-slaying chainsaw finally shows up, it does get put to proper use (though I prefer the way Álvarez used it). The way Cronin has Beth stumble across it late in the film, however, feels like a fumble. The chainsaw has become less an implement for mayhem than a tool for franchise upkeep.
6 out of 10
Evil Dead Rise is in theaters now.
Written and directed by Lee Cronin
Cinematography by Dave Garbett.
Starring Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, and Nell Fisher.
Produced by Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and Rob Tapert.
Rated R for violence.
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