‘Evil Dead Rise’ review: Dir. Lee Cronin (2023) 

You’ve seen the Deadites in a cabin in the woods. You’ve seen them brandish swords in the Middle Ages. now get ready to see them as you’ve never seen them before – in a rundown high-rise apartment building in LA! 

Evil Dead Rise is the latest continuation of the horror franchise started by director Sam Raimi and his star Bruce Campbell back in 1981 with their video nasty classic The Evil Dead. What has followed has been a franchise of changing faces, skewering to the more comedic in its immediate follow-ups – the ever-so-groovy Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness – before laying dormant for over 20 years.

It roared back into life in 2013, once more becoming a hardcore horror flick with Fee Alvarez’s Raimi-produced remake Evil Dead. Still one of the most bloody and gruesome mainstream horror movies that this reviewer has certainly ever seen, Evil Dead ‘13 felt like it was resurrecting the franchise as something anew, something Raimi was striving for back in the early 80s but never quite had the budget to realise.

Discussions of a follow-up and a potential crossover with the original trilogy started pretty soon after its release – thanks to the fact it made nearly $100 million off of a modest $17 million budget – yet nothing ever seemed to materialise. Alvarez moved on to other projects, and Bruce Campbell’s Ash returned in three seasons of Ash Vs Evil Dead, with talks of a new movie all but dissipating. But never one to stay dead for long, the chaotic evil of the Deadites has finally been unleashed once more on the big screen, with up-and-coming Irish director Lee Cronin pouring the buckets of blood in a new stand-alone entry. Has it been worth the wait? 

It’s worth knowing going in that Evil Dead Rise is very much apart, with only really certain franchise touchstones keeping it in the wheelhouse – with it seemingly taking on more of an anthology approach than wanting to tie directly into any version we’ve seen before. Tonally, it is not far off from the 2013 remake, opting more for gruesome terror and body horror as the flesh-possessing demons go about their wicked business. 

The targets for the evil spirits this timeout are Beth (Lily Sullivan) who goes to visit her older sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) after receiving the unexpected news that she’s pregnant. Ellie has problems of her own, however. A mother of three to teens Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Danny (Morgan Davies) and 10-year-old Kassie (Nell Fisher), Ellie is going through a separation and is also being forced to move out of her apartment in an old LA high-rise. On the night of Aunt Beth’s arrival, an earthquake reveals a hidden vault underneath the creaky old building, and hidden within is a certain book of the dead: let’s hope no one reads from it.

Evil Dead Rise does all you could expect from an Evil Dead movie. It has moments of blood and guts that’ll make you squirm, plenty of excretions, stabbings, gougings, limb flaying, you name it. It certainly is not one that skimps on gore. But weirdly, none of it quite rings with the same shock factor as 2013, with many of its more big horror moments already shown or teased in its marketing, so much so that when things start happening nothing particularly takes you by surprise. The pacing is also a little awkward. as one encounter with demon possession rolls out one after the other with escalating mayhem, throwing out blood and loud choral music to a point where it all nearly becomes a bit tiring. 

Where it is more successful is in its characters and execution of the madness. The film looks incredible, with exceptional production design in the contained high-rise building and a good sense of playful mischief from Cronin behind the camera as more blood is thrown on the screen. He touches on everyone from Raimi to Stanley Kubrick to Brian De Palma as he unleashes mayhem, with camera tricks, split diopters, and a kinetic sense of movement giving visual flair to the demonic doings. 

But nothing would work without a bit of decent character work, and Cronin’s script spends a good amount of time laying in the groundwork to make Beth and Ellie’s family one to root for – and mourn for – once evil has been unleashed. Sutherland as Ellie in particular is a standout, bringing in a lot of warmth as the caring mother and sister, before switching it up completely once she becomes a vessel for evil. She’s creepy, wicked, and unnerving in a physically demanding role. Beth’s arc of daunting motherhood is a little cliche for the genre, but Sullivan brings the requisite grit, determination and drive to be a worthy hero for this iteration of the franchise. 

Evil Dead Rise is an excellently produced entry in the franchise, even if it never does anything that proves particularly rattling. It never leaves a mark in the way that the original or 2013 managed to do, and it never hits the giddy levels of devilish mischief that fans know the franchise is capable of. But it is undeniably well made, with Cronin creating a very stylish calling card for himself, and it should make for some solid Friday night thrills for those keen for a dose of the Deadites. 

Evil Dead Rise is released in the UK and Ireland on 21st August.