Evil Dead Rise [dir. Lee Cronin]

Among successful horror franchises, the Evil Dead (ED) series has largely avoided the phenomenon of being 'sequelized' to death. Yes, there have been offshoots. Sam Raimi, who put together the 1981 film (with his close collaborators Bruce Campbell and Bob Tapert), helmed two increasingly ambitious sequels in 1987 (Evil Dead II) and 1992 (Army of Darkness), that successively shifted the tone from pure horror to macabre comedy to comic-book hero adventure territory. In 2013, debutante feature film-maker Fede Alvarez was handed the reins for a reboot of the original, which did well at the box-office and was appreciated for its unpretentious ferocity. In 2015, a cable television series called Ash vs Evil Dead was launched, starring ED series regular Campbell, which has till date run into 3 seasons. Now in 2023, another relative newcomer Lee Cronin has been chosen to craft a new feature entry, Evil Dead Rise (EDR).

So it's not as though the creators have let the IP stagnate, but considering the gargantuan number of sequel features and adjunct material generated by rival horror franchises like Halloween, Friday the 13th, Hellraiser etc, Raimi and Co have been rather choosy about who they let handle their baby. It is a restraint that has worked in their favor. Their more prolific rival series have invariably had installments so wretched even the rabid fans find hard to justify, but everything released thus far in the ED franchise has enjoyed at least a basal level of popularity among 'Deadites'. There is talk of opening up the franchise for more frequent exploitation, so the future may be different, but we will not concern ourselves with that now.

EDR is not directly connected with the previous films in the franchise, and is more of a soft reboot in a different setting. The film sets up a misleading prologue with the 'Cabin in the Woods' location that has been the basis of all ED movies thus far (cannily satirized in the 2015 film of that name). But after a taster of the scares, we are taken 'One day earlier' to downtown LA, inside a rundown apartment building which is going to be taken down soon. Among the residents is Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), single-handedly nurturing 3 kids after her husband abandoned her. Ellie is visited by her sister Beth (Lily Sullivan), with whom she has a troubled relationship. Beth is a roadie (Ellie insists on calling her a groupie) trying to cope with the recent fact that she is pregnant. Shortly after the sisters meet, there is an earthquake and the basement area opens up to reveal a hitherto walled in chamber with a strange book and a set of records. ED fans will know exactly how things proceed from here.

Yep, this is the famed Necronomicon aka Book of the Dead. Of course one of Ellie's teens has to open up the book and play the record* with the chants that call in demons from another dimension, and (ha!) all hell breaks loose. Let me say this straight out, there is no originality to EDR. Almost everything you see here, you have seen in previous horror films, often better ones. That said, like with Fede Alvarez's 2013 reboot , there is a lot of energy. Even in the possibly censored theatrical release, the movie features a fair amount of gore - including a scalping, an eye-gouging and swallowing of broken glass - and blood flows literally in gallons; a later scene where an elevator fills with the red stuff is a winking nod to The Shining.

Eschewing the overt comic elements the Raimi-Campbell sequels incorporated, the tone is more straight horror like the first ED film (and the 2013 reboot). Sutherland makes a good meal of Ellie, clearly relishing the evil of her possessed avatar. EDR makes things mildly uncomfortable when threatening or bringing harm to children, but it does so without being exploitative. Within the constrained location, director Lee Cronin echoes the isolation of the "Cabin in the Woods" - the action is set entirely within the apartment building, most of it on a single floor with a broken inaccessible staircase and a dangerously unreliable elevator. Especially in the scenes where demon Ellie gorily dispatches multiple rescue attempts (including one that leaves behind a series trademark boomstick to be picked up later), the movie effectively builds pressure.

I am a little loath to comment on the intensity of EDR's scares unless I know I am watching an uncensored Director's Cut. That said, the aforementioned elevator sequence apart, this film didn't really have me squirming. It's not outrageously imaginative like the Raimi original, and its creature designs and set-pieces are derivative of previous films without meaningfully expanding on them. To EDR's credit, it runs a brisk pace (97min), relies mainly on pleasing old-skool make-up and practical FX for the scares, and does not detour (apart from that prologue that gets an "Eh, whatever" resolution at the end). It is decent bloodcorn entertainment, if also eminently forgettable.

* Trivia - Bruce Campbell makes an audio cameo in one of the recordings played during the film.