Evil Dead Rise — Review Thread

Evil Dead Rise(4/27/2023)
The Evil Dead franchise is unique in a lot of ways. For one, it’s very much a cult success that has seemingly risen to mainstream popularity only much later than its original (and best) installments were made independently. Even more odd is that it’s one of the few horror series that’s more defined by its hero than its villain. Even beloved “final girl” horror protagonists like Laurie Strode and Ellen Ripley aren’t really as iconic as the image of the murderers they faced in their films but I do think Ash as a character kind of eclipses the “deadites” and that has been a complication as they try to make the series survive even as Bruce Campbell has ceased to really be viable as the star of a major studio motion picture. Recasting is not really an option but putting a potentially “corny” sixty year old at the center of your movie probably isn’t going to work with “the kids” either. They tried doing a the “big budget remake” approach with 2013’s Evil Dead and that movie was, okay. I kind of dug it and its aggressive bloodletting and thought they did a decent job of replicating that first movie with a bigger budget. The new movie has a title and trailer that suggest that it’s going in a different direction this time but in a lot of ways it’s kind of just doing the same thing that 2013 movie is: making a more serious horror remake of that first movie but with a bigger budget. This difference of course is that this one is set in a run down apartment rather than a cabin in the woods but that’s not really as substantial a difference as you might think, they’re both still contained locations for a claustrophobic fight with the forces of evil.

The other big difference here is that rather than a group of college students the people at the center of this movie are a family, which is an interesting idea but also kind of a double edged sword. On one hand the movie does a really good job of establishing this family and getting you invested in them and their various foibles and quirks but on the other hand maybe it does too good of a job at this? Like, to the point where it becomes kind of a bummer when the bloodletting starts since you don’t particularly want these people to become victims of a zombification curse. There’s a reason that the teenagers in the Friday the 13th movies are made to be these shallow and vapid creatures played by actors who are obviously pushing thirty, it makes it a lot more fun to root for Jason to murder them. The teenagers here look like actual children and they seem like good people as well so there isn’t a lot of fun to be had with watching them get possessed, which could be very effective in some other contexts but the Evil Dead movies are not really supposed to disturb you they’re kind of supposed to be the “fun” kind of horror to varying degrees even when they’re not going full horror comedy like they did with some of the later Bruce Campbell ones. But that concern aside this is a well-made flick with some quality gore and neat little set-pieces and I think most horror fans are going to want to give it a look but it wasn’t really the full revitalization I was hoping for.
*** out of Five