Evil Dead Rise

4 outta 5

The Evil Dead series has gone through various permutations across the decades. There’s the original Sam Raimi directed trilogy, plus the (very awesome) Ash vs. Evil Dead TV series, and the 4^th remake/sequel Evil Dead. Evil Dead Rise is the fifth Evil Dead movie and probably one of the messiest. Considering how messy this series is, that’s saying something as Rise goes for the intensity of the earlier films. It is missing a lot of the dopey laughs that occur in some of the installments as there’s no Ash spouting catchphrases here, and instead this is more of a horror experience. It certainly provides Deadites being evil dead, though.

Beth (Lilly Sulivan) is going to visit her sister, Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and Ellie’s kids, Danny (Morgan Davies), Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Kassie (Nell Fisher). They live in a dilapidated apartment complex that is slated for demolition, and Ellie is trying to keep her family together after their father left. When there’s a suspiciously timed earthquake, the garage cracks open and the kids find old recordings and a suspicious book. Danny plays the record and unleashes a nefarious spirit that possesses their mom, Ellie, turning her into a Deadite. Deadites attack and possess hapless humans and now the family is locked in an apartment with what used to be their mom. And even worse, the Evil Dead begins to infect others.

There’s some delicate application of continuity here, which is a welcome attempt to have the series make some sort of sense. In Army of Darkness, the funniest and dopiest Evil Dead movie, Ash found three Necronomicons, and one of them bit him and flew around. In Evil Dead Rise, the Book of the Dead has teeth on the pages like the book that nipped Ash. And when Danny is listening to an old vinyl recording of a priest talking about finding the Book of the Dead, the 100-year-old recording says there are three volumes. In interviews with Rise’s director, Lee Cronin, he theorizes each Evil Dead installment features one. The first version is the one that torments Ash in the trilogy and the TV show, the second book ends up in 2013’s Evil Dead, and the biting one is in Rise.

Bruce Campbell’s Ash has become such an iconic character in the series, and he was last seen in the final episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead tearing his way into a post-apocalyptic future, this ditches him for new characters. Although, the iconography of his movies is still peppered throughout Rise. There’s a fun in-joke reference with pizza boxes called Henrietta’s Pizza with the tagline “Come Get Some” which references a monster Henrietta from Evil Dead and one of Ash’s big catchphrases. The Deadites in Rise all chant in unison “Dead by Dawn!” which is a big moment from Evil Dead II. And there’s a final monster confrontation in Rise that recalls the big mutant monster at the end of Evil Dead II. Beth takes on the monster with a shotgun and a chainsaw, two of Ash’s personal favourite weapons from the Evil Dead series. The finale monster in Rise is very horrific, a three headed and multiple-limbed creature with Ellie’s head at the front hollering. The way it’s disposed of is inventively gross and extreme. And there’s even some decapitated head monster taunting, which is a staple of the Evil Dead series.

The jokes from Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness and the TV series are sometimes sorely missed in Rise. Once you pull out Ash commenting on the absurdity of it, it sort of becomes a grindhouse of carnage. But the direction by Cronin features a few inventive moments that recall Sam Raimi’s gonzo choices. There’s a chunk of violence that is only glimpsed through the peephole at the apartment door. When Ellie is at the peephole asking her daughter to come back inside, it is a dark moment of manipulation which is something Deadites do often.

Interestingly, when Ellie first turns into a Deadite she has a moment where she breaks out of it and tells her sister to protect the kids. The Deadite possessed Ellie has a twisted version of a mother’s love, as it wants to be closer to its family. Seeing family members turn into Deadites gives it more shock than usual. Sullivan’s Beth takes on the heroic role and she gets to splatter some Deadites and is effectively ticked off in the finale. Gabrielle Echols’ Bridget seems also heroic until she becomes twisted, and her Deadite reveal of eating glass is nuts. Davie’s Danny is on the receiving end of some really brutal violence. Nell Fisher’s Kassie is the kid put in jeopardy the most although she has one of the movie’s best lines when she tells her Aunt she’ll make a good mom because Beth knows how to lie to kids. Evil Dead Rise devotes a bit of time to establishing the family member dynamics at the start, fleshing out these characters before the Deadite chaos starts.

Evil Dead Rise is a solid installment in the long running Evil Dead franchise that uses several familiar bits in new ways. It sticks to the essential elements of an Evil Dead franchise and ratchets up the gross horror. It certainly isn’t as bizarrely funny as the series can be, but it knows how to be a solid Evil Dead experience.