Evil Dead Rise, released in 2023 was directed and written by Lee Cronin which saw a successful viewing which lead to a theatrical release. As it was very much a COVID film, most of those films at the time went straight to online streaming services so it was very interesting and refreshing to hear of an Evil Dead instalment that justified breaking the mould and pushing for the big screen.

I, in many ways can see why. It has an extremely strong opening sequence that plays cleverly with the classic camera movements being a drone and throwing you deep into a possession situation rather than the build up we’re accustomed too. Not to mention, having the title card appear behind the scenery with a strong score and beautiful tones will stand out as one of the best opening titles in film history, never mind horror films alone as a genre.

The film then introduces us to our cast of unsuspecting and unlucky family members as an unexpected earth quake quite literally shatters the foundations of their normal life.
I think we can all agree that as the literal poster girl for the movie, Alyssa Sutherland portrays an excellent and twisted Deadite that torments her family with guilt and a twisted view of motherly love. Because of this it’s clear to see why most of the trailers, posters and conversation centred around her performance. But I do want to give out a complete wholehearted shout out to the entire of the cast, especially as some of them are young child actors, what they were asked to do and pull off was truly impressive.

The film overall has an interesting tone, the colour pallet especially is quite warm which I think in some ways helps to enforce the cosy and confined nature of the surroundings. The film is almost completely set in candlelight which gives it moments of natural eeriness and creepy factor. I do think that as the film progresses, it does become a bit of an issue. It certainly makes the blood appear much brighter, sometimes it almost looks as if the cast are literally stained in red dye where much of the realism of that blood has been lost.

The films plot was fairly simple, make sense of the situation before finally realising there is nothing that can be done to save the situation, so you just have to run away. However, before this conclusion is revealed in the third act (from listening to the third vinyl record), we’ve had a huge chunk of the film that to me is a lot of pussyfooting around. Deadites are just deliberately walking into some kind of damage and then remaining inactive, taking times to pop up and down like whack-a-moles. This I suppose is meant to be paid off by the big finale, an amalgamation of the family members into a conjoined beast. Yet we spend so little time with his creature that it’s hard to actually think of how this is even an effective tactic to move around or to catch Beth and Kassie (Lily Sullivan, Nell Fisher).

For me personally, Evil Dead Rise was an adequate instalment into the franchise and an alright horror film. I think that it got perhaps more credit than it otherwise would have due to COVID limiting the amount of media that could be filmed and released during the pandemic years. The film certainly lacked overarching control by Sam Raimi. The film had Evil Dead flavourings, but it didn’t to me, feel like a full meal. Unlike the rest of the Evil Dead franchise, Rise was obsessed with pushing a ‘pro-life’ messaging, most of the key areas of dialogue is centred around Beth being pregnant and despite only doing a pregnancy test this film confirms that this foetus not only has a soul but a heartbeat. Which to me started to feel a little bit out there and ridiculous. For a film which does have the C- word in it, it’s main fall-back of abusive language is summarised by “stinking horrible group slut”, rather PG compared to the rest. I found this quite distracting throughout, so many mentions of “groupie” this and “groupie” that, that it sounded completely dated.

Alas, I can say that I’m very pleased that Sam Raimi will return to oversee the future instalments. He’s committed to creating a ‘bible’ for all future instalments to follow. Hopefully to avoid being side tracked as much as Rise was, with other moralistic messaging and get back to good old fashioned Evil Dead. Who knows if any consequences will come from reading the Evil Dead bible!

A Feel Reel Rating: 6/10