Studio: New Line Cinema
Director: Lee Cronin
Writer: Lee Cronin
Producer: Rob Tapert
Stars: Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, Nell Fisher
Review Score:
Summary:
Demonic activity besieges an apartment building where a woman must protect her nieces and nephew after their mother becomes possessed.
Review:
“Evil Dead Rise” does not start strong. The opening scene features a mixed trio vacationing at a lakeside cabin. The two women are cousins. The lone male is one of their beaus. They’re identified as such from a line of dialogue that goes something like, “Hey cuz, since your other friends didn’t show up and I’m stuck here with your latest boyfriend…” I don’t know about you, but my friends and family don’t usually speak in exposition to remind us of our relation to one another. Then again, we aren’t often stuck in stale setups that necessitate coughing out information in an awkwardly unnatural way.
This is a weird sequence for a different reason though, with that reason being this is evidently an epilogue someone decided to repurpose as a prologue. Two of those three people will never be seen again following these six-ish minutes, and the other only reappears about a minute before end credits. It would seem this scenario simply satisfies a common “we have to start with a scare” requirement that people in charge insist on for big horror releases. Needless to say, none of this by-the-book basic-ness bodes well for “Evil Dead Rise” going against the grain, and we’ve only just hit the title screen.
The actual plot more or less forms around Beth, a hard rocking roadie whose free spirit lifestyle gets a reality check when she receives unwanted news that she’s pregnant. Seeking support, and perhaps some perspective, Beth turns to her sister Ellie. Beth isn’t exactly uncaring, or purposefully neglectful. But she’s been so characteristically caught up in her own rigmarole that she wasn’t even aware Ellie’s husband skipped out almost three months ago, leaving Ellie to raise three children alone in a condemned apartment building slated for imminent demolition.
It doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict where this is going. Not only does Beth need to fix the rift she carelessly created with her sister, she needs to figure out if she should trade Motorhead for motherhood. She’s going to get that opportunity, and “Evil Dead Rise” is going to get a thin sheen of a theme in what’s otherwise a straightforward splatterfest, when one of Ellie’s children discovers the Necronomicon, and Beth has to make selfless sacrifices in the name of family as the building becomes a hotbed of hellish havoc.
It would be easy to take a shot at “Evil Dead Rise” for having a hollow heart, speaking strictly about the story, except dramatic depth has never been a hallmark of the “Evil Dead” formula. “Evil Dead Rise” understands its audience has a unique set of needs, and those needs include only a modicum of narrative meat to motivate midnight movie madness. They also include fan service callbacks to the original entries, such as ropes attacking one woman like tree tendrils and a Raimi-cam tracking shot that precedes a punchline involving a drone.
Oddly, being part of a famous franchise brings a bit of baggage because “Evil Dead Rise” is at its best when it dares to do things differently. For the film’s first hour, I felt it was frustratingly “fine.” There were a couple of standout creative bits, like an action sequence that takes place through a peephole where choreographed carnage whips in and out of a static fish-eye frame. There were also some bafflingly banal distractions, like a bit where two neighbors pointlessly work on accessing a fire escape in a meaningless moment that does nothing for their two-dimensional characters, let alone the movie. My early notes mused that writer/director Lee Cronin appeared destined to continue a successful career creating slick studio thrillers, likely as a name on the shortlist for “Saw” sequels or big-budget Stephen King adaptations. I just wasn’t seeing a distinctive personality that would elevate such efforts above passable popcorn fare.
My tepid tune started changing at that one-hour mark, when an unexpected death took place that was made even more shocking by the person responsible for delivering the killing blow. The now-notorious cheese grater scene had already occurred, and I can confirm it is 100% guaranteed to make you tighten your calf muscle and involuntarily squirm. Yet with this death, all bets were suddenly off as “Evil Dead Rise” declared it was done playing by pre-determined rules.
From this point forward, the film’s last half-hour becomes a horror hound’s wildest dream come true. “Evil Dead Rise’s” last act comes fully loaded with inventive attacks, suspenseful staging, and some of the gnarliest nuttiness an R-rating can contain. We’re talking an elevator flooded with blood, a crazy-legged creature combining nightmarish imagery from “Resident Evil” with “Silent Hill,” and a bloodbath finale that makes Peter Jackson’s “Dead/Alive” look like it was swimming in a kiddie pool. Repeating something already said, “Evil Dead Rise” is light on narrative substance. But if you just want a cinematic spectacle of deadite-driven gruesomeness, the likes of which are rarely seen with such a high level of go-for-broke practical FX, “Evil Dead Rise” delivers more entertaining amounts of gore than any fan could ever hope for.
Two-thirds of the film are worth a C+ at best for being too derivative and too standardized. But the last third easily earns a B, or climbs all the way up to A depending on personal taste for pure audiovisual insanity. Were I to score a rating based solely on the satisfying taste left in one’s mouth when end credits roll, “Evil Dead Rise” would be an undeniable winner. Averaging everything together, however, the movie is more middling than that, though it would have been an all-timer if the outrageous energy of the ending had been a mainstay of the entire runtime.
Review Score: 65
If you want to see impossible amounts of blood explode crimson colors like the world’s worst version of a gender reveal, well, “Abigail” at least has that.