Evil Dead Rise is the fifth film in the Evil Dead franchise, and it is directed by Lee Cronin with the series’ original director, Sam Raimi, serving as producer. Lilly Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Nell Fisher, Gabrielle Echols, and Morgan Davies star as a terrorized family after one of them opens the Necronomicon, aka The Book of the Dead.
Most of the film’s runtime is dedicated to a half-possession/half-home-invasion horror story that retraces some beats seen in other classic horrors (read: The Exorcist [1973] meets Straw Dogs [1971]). The plot, such as it is, is thin, and the character beats are relatively predictable.
Evil Dead Rise is very good at what it is and what it’s trying to do. But let’s be clear about what it is. It is the grossest, most tensely scary thriller that has been released in the last calendar year in American cinemas. It aims to be the most outrageous thing that you have ever seen, and it largely succeeds. There are scenes in this film that I still have not recovered from.
Evil Dead Rise lacks some of the humor and some of the camp of the earlier Evil Dead films. There’s one scene in the first film in which a severed hand sprouts spider legs and runs across the kitchen floor, which is gross and ridiculous but also a bit funny; there’s none of that in Evil Dead Rise, which aims to be gross and ridiculous and not the least bit funny.
Do not expect Evil Dead Rise to be anything more than what it is: a gross-out spectacle with cheap scares that are quite effective. And it will ruin the rest of your day, as it did mine.
