Film Review - Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Wow, it feels like a long, long time since we had a run-in with the Book of the Dead, doesn’t it? With all the new horror pretenders coming into the mix and the genre thriving like never before, it felt inevitable that a new instalment was only a matter of time away despite the near-decade wait since the last gory spectacular. 1981’s original helped redefine what horror was capable of – both thematically and visually – gaining notoriety in more ways than one (deemed a “video nasty” in the UK back in the crazy days of Mary Whitehouse and VHS). Still, its legacy, and that of its sequels, have only grown since then.

Now, four decades later, we have a new date with Naturom Demonto in the form of Evil Dead Rise, the brainchild of Irish writer/director Lee Cronin who rose to prominence off the back of his brilliant 2019 supernatural horror A Hole In The Ground, a film that would lead him to Sam Raimi. There was much talk of a fourth Evil Dead and a sequel to Fede Alvarez’s gruesomely brilliant 2013 reboot/sequel but, despite our appetite for those, we are glad that this new film exists. It was no doubt a hard task to revitalise the franchise once more and find something new and inventive to ignite audience appetites whilst still paying homage to its history. Still, Cronin has done both with aplomb, creating another pulsating, unyielding horror film that’s as frenetic and clever as its historical siblings.

The infamous book finds its way into the hands of a young family this time, with single mother Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) struggling with a looming eviction and absent husband as her children Bridget, Kassie, and Danny (Gabrielle Echols, Nell Fisher, Morgan Davies) wrestle with their own demons. One night, Ellie’s sister Beth (Lily Sullivan) treks across the country to tell them some news but not before a powerful earthquake occurs, ripping holes in their apartment building including their basement car park where the kids discover an old bank vault and, nestled inside, a mysterious book. Seeing that it has teeth for a padlock, you’d have understood them throwing it back down there, but curiosity gets the better of them, and hell, wouldn’t you know it, breaks loose.

Raimi‘s style of direction and storytelling was so distinctive that anybody stepping up to the plate to try to do half of what he accomplished faced a herculean task but under Cronin’s thoughtful eye, any fears you may have are quickly allayed. His vision is incisive and chaotic, immediately filling the screen with dread and blood and some truly brilliant imagery that will sear itself into your brain – and never lets up, punctured by Sutherland’s spindly, terrifying devil at the heart of it, all of which combines to ramp up the tension to 11 and beyond through its lean 97 minutes runtime.

There are plenty of hat-tips for series fanatics that will be greeted with applause but there are also some other choice nuggets from the genre that audiences will get their kicks from but the film isn’t just about that: indeed, there’s much under the surface about motherhood, growing pains, single parent life for both adults and children and current economic landscapes, all of which are perhaps even darker horrors than anything on screen here. But thanks to Cronin‘s astute vision and his winning cast, the Rise is well worth some time down below.