In Retrospect: Evil Dead Rise

Alright, from the top!

Yeah it has been about three years since I've watched this and regardless of if the new movie is any kind of follow up, it's nice to watch this again. Still pretty fucking horrifying just on a conceptual level I can tell you that, and I am going to be rather bold here for a hot second and just say Alyssa Sutherland...best horror performance of 2023. Now I know David was really really good in Late Night With The Devil that year, but Alyssa knocked it out of the park. And indeed while the characters aren't super intelligent, the writing is solid enough which is something I feel is grossly needed in the horror scene. That indicates several things to me, they don't half-ass a script, they want you to be invested and engage with these characters, and it just makes for a better story overall. Sure there's some fodder to up the kill count, but our main family unit is pretty damn good. I don't need airtight plots and ingenious characters, and to see a even more modern lens implemented to an Evil Dead film after 2013 works great! It all feels like a necessary evolution to the series, I don't think it's trying to match or top the original trilogy but rather just stand on it's own merits which it does admirably. Alllll the makeup, gore, and effects still are effective and the cinematography is anything but dull or unoriginal lending to a very good modern horror film. And considering the fact I haven't seen shit in terms of promotion for Evil Dead Burn, hell I can barely describe the poster, and yet I'm still very interested to walk into that theater Friday goes to show what a total underdog series this is. I mean really think about the trajectory of this franchise and the standing it has in the horror community, and it's kinda unbelievable we're at this point! Even I'm not that die hard a fan of the series despite reviewing every film, but I respect the living hell out of it and as long as we keep getting gnarly and good stories I'm totally game to see a new one. The score still stands at 3 stars, 7/10, and fingers crossed for even better this weekend.

Evil Dead Rise

Nope, not even a small connection to the 2013 movie. But you know, I was going to review it sooner or later.

So Evil Dead Rise, new entry in the series with executive producers Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell chipping in, pretty decent I would say. I can see it as a complete standalone film yet it has a tiny bit of an open ending, focusing on a single mom with her three kids and visiting sister in a run down apartment tower and after an earthquake (still figuring out if it was demon caused) whaddayaknow they find a clearly fucked book and take it back home. Kids. Now one aspect I really appreciated in this is you get down time with this family before stuff goes sideways, hell it almost becomes a drama learning about their relationships and little character details which I felt was handled very well, I was invested in that. I mean when you bring kids into the mix of an Evil Dead movie it's almost a given they'll get possessed and if they really got balls they'll drop those kids like a bad habit. They got balls the size of watermelons. But it makes you root for the family even more, wanting them to make it out from the fairly unsettling visage of their mom. The effects work for makeup, prosthetics, and gore are very good but I'll admit that's a hard area to top from the 2013 movie but it all works in creepy ways. However one aspect I can't stand which is an unfortunate trend in horror for the past few years is, creepy shit is starting to escalate, sound drops to nothing, then a spooky thing happens. And that happens a fair bit in this movie, but at the exact same time they don't commit to a great deal of jumpscares, and I really like just seeing weird freaky shit occur without any quick edits to go BOO so it's not a complete failure in that aspect. They still do plenty new, and because it's a standalone I really feel like someone could walk into this blind without seeing a frame of previous Evil Dead movies and not only roll with it but like it. Yeah, you get the boomstick and chainsaw, you see the clock, but to the uninitiated those are just elements that work in the film. I thought the cast was rock solid across the board, I mean these kids freak out but not in an annoying loud way, the drama aspects as I stated above work well and the performances make that work, even the other tenants who are purely ancillary characters don't feel like a waste or there to pad the runtime. It's a competently made film, the innovations bring a new edge to the proceedings, and I would even go so far as to say it's on par with the original Evil Dead. That ranking will come up in a brief moment but first, ratings! I give it 3 stars, 7/10. Now let's figure out the sequence.

5. Evil Dead (2013)

4. Evil Dead Rise

3. Evil Dead (1981)

2. Army Of Darkness

1. Evil Dead 2

One week closer to the end. I had something larger planned for my birthday week but doing two weeks of TV shows would have been rough so I'm swapping it out for something that has crept back in my life somewhat.