Evil Dead Rise (2023)
Remember in my review of 2013's Evil Dead how I said that gore is an art? Well, it's time for me to double down on that assertion - gore is an art, and just like any art, there are different styles and genres. The tasteful blood of the original Halloween. The visceral, squib-powered gunfights of Django Unchained.
And in this exhibit, the gushing, fountainous, flooding gore of Evil Dead.
If you thought that the franchise couldn't still up the ante in the realm of red, you'd be sorely mistaken. This movie overtakes Evil Dead (2013) in pure gallons, and does so more consistently as well. If you think there's a scene with too little gore, wait a minute and check again.
It's not just the gore, however, that sells this entry into the series; it's also the momentum. The lead-up to the invasion of the Deadites this time around isn't quite as long, and once the pedal hits the floor, it doesn't let up until the credits are about to roll.
Evil Dead Rise follows Ellie, a single mother of three, along with said three children and her sister, Beth. The son, Danny, happens upon one of the Necronomicons after an earthquake reveals a hidden room beneath their apartment building. Along with it, he finds a series of vinyls cut by a priest, who foolishly read from the book, and has now unleashed that same evil upon our cast of meatbags.
One of the film's biggest strengths is picking a single, primary Deadite to focus on. This means that the Deadite in question, Ellie, gets to really shine as a looming form of menace, as well as gets to show off how absolutely fantastic Alyssa Sutherland is. This is actually the first thing I've ever seen her in, but she KILLS it the whole way through.
Flipping between the concerned and loving mother, and the sadistic, brutal demon, Sutherland sells every single second of her time on screen. The rest of the cast is also very good, but Sutherland deserves special recognition for a bona-fide tour de force of a performance.
Is it bad that I find those eyes kind of alluring? It probably is.
The movie also establishes pretty early on that no one is safe, when one of the young kids that lives on the same floor as the family gets absolutely brutalized by Ellie. This helps sell the stakes, as Ellie's kids are all fairly young. The oldest is 21, and the youngest is a whole 12 years old. So when you watch a kid who can't be much older get treated just like any other victim, it immediately tells you that no, the little girl character is in no way safe from what's about to happen.
The setting of a high-rise apartment also means that the variety of the fears is FAR expanded beyond what you get from a tiny cabin in the woods. There's air ducts with plenty of crawling space, there's rooms full of objects that can easily become weapons, and there's really no way to escape. Much of the movie is spent even trying to think of HOW they could escape. Even better, the answer they come to ends up being worthless.
The climax of the movie rivals that of the film before it, even as it pays homage to it. Before it gets to that point, though, almost every environment that the horror has passed through has been thoroughly trashed. I mentioned, when talking about the very first Evil Dead, that whoever is in charge of continuity must have a tough job. That goes double for this installment, with most of the action taking place in a tiny, three-room apartment.
That leads into probably my favorite aspect of the movie - it knows how to pay forward every single scene. If there's a scene with something that could be a weapon, you WILL see that object become a weapon. The first 20 minutes is basically a series of setups that the movie spends the next hour and 16 minutes paying off. It's excellent visual storytelling, and adds to the suspense. "What about those scissors under the couch?!"
As the movie swiftly builds into a ridiculous crescendo of blood and guts, everything funnels down into one of the coolest final sequences I’ve ever seen, made no less awesome by the introduction of one of Evil Dead’s most horrific abominations, and honestly, one of the most original ones I’ve seen in horror to date. Maybe I’ll find I’m wrong as I go further into the rabbit hole, but as it stands, the ultimate form of evil this movie presents is one I won’t soon forget.
I'm glad to see that horror has been going so strong lately, and even happier to see legacy franchises still kicking all kinds of ass. The story is good, but no Shakespearean drama or Homeric epic. It’s an Evil Dead story, with all that that entails. But that doesn’t hold it back one bit, and if you're looking for a thrill ride covered in rouge, this is for you.
