Evil Dead Rise opens with the signature Sam Raimi "Deadite POV" zoom to a lake near a secluded cabin in the woods, where a bookish final girl-type is trying to get some reading done while an obnoxious dude-bro chugs from a bottle beside her.
An all-too familiar set-up, but just when it seems like we're in for yet another a retread of the original Evil Dead, we're introduced to a whole new set of characters in a very different location.
In LA, disillusioned guitar tech Beth (Lily Sullivan) tires of life on the road and decides to pay a visit to her estranged sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and her three kids (played by Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols and Nell Fisher) in their soon-to-be demolished apartment block. Unbeknownst to Beth, Ellie's husband has left the picture, and she's struggling to hold things together.
Of course, we don't have very long to wait until their situation is vastly, violently worsened, as Ellie's eldest discovers a Necronomicon (aka the Book of the Dead) and begins to play the incantations on his turntable (as you do).
Ellie is possessed, and the gleefully evil Kandarian demon uses her as a puppet to launch a campaign of terror against her family.
Moving the gruesome action to a new location was a smart decision, but that's not the only thing that sets Rise apart - not only from the earlier Evil Dead films, but so many other (often inferior) horror flicks. Writer/director Lee Cronin wisely gives us time to get to know the characters (to some extent, at least) before the carnage, and their family dynamic allows us to become so much more invested than we would have been if it was another group of interchangeable, irritating teens being massacred.
It also makes it that much harder to watch when the bloodletting begins.
The entire cast is impressive, but Sutherland emerges as the standout, with a truly unhinged performance as a loving, if flawed, mother turned demented killing machine. Sullivan is with her every step of the way as our chainsaw-wielding hero, and young Nell Fisher (Ellie's youngest, Kassie) will have you crossing your fingers in the hope that Cronin will relent just a tad and show some mercy.
Evil Dead Rise is, without question, the goriest, most intense, ruthless and mean-spirited film in the franchise, and might be one of the most outright f*cked-up mainstream horror movies of all time. We're not quite talking The Sadness levels of depravity, for example, but one gets the impression Cronin pushed the violence as far as he possibly could without the studio having a word (and we wouldn't be surprised if some cuts were demanded).
Knives, guns, scissors, glass, a blow-torch, a damn cheese grater - you name it, it's probably used to inflict punishment on our beleaguered protagonists. By the time the obligatory chainsaw revs up, enough blood has been splattered all over the screen to fill several swimming pools... and then it keeps on flowing.
Cronin pays homage to the original Evil Dead films in several ways, but tonally, this is a very different beast altogether. There is some pitch black humor here and there (the flying eyeball sequence is straight out of Raimi's playbook), but, for the most part, Rise plays it deadly serious. Some fans may take issue with this - there's already been backlash from a few critics who don't consider it a "real" Evil Dead movie - but for this film, with these characters, in this setting, it's difficult to imagine how piling on the slapstick would have been anything but detrimental to the story.
Sure, a few characters make dumb decisions (just something we horror fans need to accept), and some might feel that the body-horror, bleeding elevator climax goes a bit too far with the OTT mayhem after a relatively plausible (once you buy into the whole demonic possession thing, obviously) set-up.
Evil Dead Rise might be an endurance test for non/casual horror fans, but seasoned gore-hounds are in for a blast. Lee Cronin takes the blood-soaked baton from Sam Raimi and beats the brakes off his characters with it, carving out his own path while adding just enough fan-service to keep the Ash faithful happy.