Jonah Naplan   May 14, 2023

Lee Cronin’s gleefully violent, gory, and vengeance-fueled thrill ride “Evil Dead Rise” is the type of extreme horror movie that fans will scream for, and non-fans will be only disgusted by. It is a damp, musty and sticky creature feature that is soaked in grime and also buckets upon buckets of amber-red blood. This “Evil Dead” film keeps the franchise’s streak of quality horror content alive, but is noticeably without its makers. Series creator Sam Raimi and iconic actor Bruce Campbell seem to be missing here, yet Cronin, for the most part, handles his ideas in a focused way. He’s not only trying his damndest to shock his audience, he’s begging the question: Are you ready for it?

“Evil Dead Rise” evolves from the dark woods of the previous movies and transports its characters to an old, rickety apartment building in Los Angeles. This allows for more intense claustrophobia to build up in your stomach and doesn’t allow much room for the multiple-elevators-worth amount of blood to flow. It’s a viscous tale of mommy issues as three children—two teenagers; Danny (Morgan Davies) and Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and younger sister Kassie (Nell Fisher)—are pitted against their own possessed single mother, Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), who after experiencing a massive earthquake that rips a hole in the apartment building’s parking garage, becomes bewitched by an evil spirit.

In a coincidence that somehow makes all the sense in the world and zero sense simultaneously, Ellie’s sister and the children’s aunt, Beth (Lily Sullivan), happens to be visiting the family at the same exact time this happens, throwing her too into the deadly fight for survival. It’s a fairly simple and straightforward premise. Here’s the prey. There’s the predator. Go! But the screenplay, also by Cronin, complicates itself by incorporating a cold open that’s absolutely gripping but has close to no relation to the story whatsoever, save for a final scene, and lore from an ancient, dusty book with teeth that dates back to old school exorcists, with logic far beyond the Catholic church.

But once “Evil Dead Rise” is enabled to scoot past the opening exposition passages, it never recedes. Cronin, working with cinematographer Dave Garbett, crafts a dreary landscape acting as the backdrop for all the flesh-munching carnage. “Evil Dead Rise” takes place almost entirely in one night, as the film is permeated with an over abundance of dimly-lit shots. The opening sequence provides the film with its only daytime scene, as pretty soon Cronin realizes how well persistent gushes of red blood fare against the endless swaths of blackness that devour the high rise apartment scenery.

This is surely one of the bloodiest films I’ve ever seen. The carnage in “Evil Dead Rise” is unrelenting and plentiful. Think of any blunt object. It’s probably used as a weapon in this movie. Knives, sword-like objects, guns, frying pans, chainsaws, bare hands, scissors, shards of glass, tattoo needles, and even cheese graters are all used as tools of self-defense. You think the movie has you impressed, and then it one-ups itself once again.

The film’s screenplay and objective is based around that very concept of shock value. Not only does the film get increasingly more and more brutal as it unfolds, but it gets more and more wildly inventive with its kills. There’s a terrific shot through the peephole of a door that gave me goosebumps, and a closing sequence with a wood chipper and a newly formed creature that gave me chills. But beyond all the unsettling imagery, “Evil Dead Rise” is a human story. The characters here do make a great amount of stupid decisions—like deciding to climb down to explore the mysterious hole in the parking garage in the first place—but it’s all done with a certain resonance that elevates “Evil Dead Rise” above other horror movies.

The kids in this movie are some of the more well-rounded victims I’ve seen in a film recently, as is the headstrong Beth. But the standout performance here is that of Alyssa Sutherland, complimented well with the makeup FX and prosthetic work of artist Tristan Lucas. She’s played as one of those monsters who wreaks tremendous havoc, but feels as if there’s someone human underneath.

If anything, I wish that “Evil Dead Rise” took more risks on the story side of things. It’s an incredibly simple concept, heightened by excellent performances, but it still devolves into some of the same tense cliques that deviate from originality. “Evil Dead Rise” is at its best when it not only wishes to shock, but actually does so. And when Cronin allows his film to go off the rails, “Evil Dead Rise” flourishes. I, too, was possessed, but to a point.

Now playing in theaters.