DEAD BY DAWN!
More than 40 years ago, Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) and friends stumbled on the now-infamous, fictional “Necronomicon.” Otherwise known as the Book of the Dead, the artifact bound in flesh and printed in blood unleashed the most gruesome demons to ever haunt the big screen. Thus, the Evil Dead franchise was born, and vicious entities have been spilling gore and possessing innocents at their forest cabin getaways ever since.
In “Evil Dead Rise,” the newest installment of the franchise that will be released on April 21, writer-director Lee Cronin took the terror from deep in the cellar to high in the air. This time, the Necronomicon unleashes ancient evil on an unsuspecting family living on the top floor of a high-rise in Los Angeles.
Sending the tradition of a franchise six feet under was an ambitious decision, but during an April 11 press conference for the movie, Cronin said that he wanted to bring a fresh feel to the Evil Dead universe.
“If you’re gonna break the mold, you’ve gotta break the mold, right?” Cronin said.
Proving himself as an emerging horror auteur, Cronin did more than break the mold; he sent tsunamis of blood, whirlwinds of snapped bones and piles upon piles of bodies. “Evil Dead Rise” is a feat of modern horror-comedy that expertly balances both a respect for horror franchise history and a voracious appetite for creating a new kind of hell.
The new installation is all about subversion. Cronin starts by subverting the cabin in the woods trope. Although the film’s sinister opening sequence occurs at a picturesque lake cabin in the middle of a forest, the rest of the runtime brings the action to the inner city.
“You can’t really get further from a cabin in the woods than the top story of a high-rise building in Los Angeles,” Cronin said.
Cronin also subverted the family dynamic. First, he paints a picture of what a scarred but tight-knit family can look like: full of love, life and laughter. Then, he flips it on its head and splashes it in blood. The family, quite literally, rots from the inside out. By invading the sanctity of the home and the innocence of childhood, Cronin turns up the heat and never lets up.
Central to the film’s electrifying spirit are the performances of the two women who lead it, estranged sisters Beth (Lily Sullivan) and Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland). They’re pitted against each other after Ellie becomes possessed and begins to terrorize her own family. Their chemistry — both as family members and as opponents — in a blood-splattered battle is palpable.
In a roundtable interview on April 11 with the Wheel and other college publications, both actresses expressed how much fun they had on set. Sullivan and Sutherland said they particularly enjoyed working with each other because they felt an immediate connection, having both grown up in the same hometown in Brisbane, Australia. They said they bonded further over the intensity of their roles.
“We had so many moments where we would kind of just look at each other and be like, ‘What are we doing? What is going on?’” Sutherland said. “It was kind of easy to use that whole sense of the absurd.”
Described by Sullivan as an “epic washing machine of obstacles and chaos” and by Sutherland as a “full celebration of carnage,” “Evil Dead Rise” gives room for the pair to inhabit their equally-riveting but staunchly-opposing roles. Where Sullivan lets out blood-curdling screams and embraces a state of adrenaline-fueled bloodthirst, Sutherland cracks sinister jokes and exercises flesh-devouring brutality. Both performances are as emotional as they are physical, and their shocking believability adds to the fear factor of an already terrifying film. All of this while their performances also take on the challenge of balancing intensity with comedy — the treasured black comedy Evil Dead fans know and love is back in its biggest dose yet, one part humorous and two parts horrific.
Both stars had never participated in a horror project of this scale before “Evil Dead Rise.” They expressed their delight at tapping into an all-encompassing female rage.
“Especially as a woman … it’s so nice to put on the Dr. Martens, the purple satin dress and hold a goddamn chainsaw above my head,” Sullivan said.
Sutherland said that her performance as a deadite — a person possessed by the demons of the Necronomicon — was “ a gift” to play as a woman.
Also impressive is child actress Nell Fisher’s performance as Kassie, who is surprisingly helpful as a kid when facing the most nightmarish version of their mother possible. Throwing scissors to assist her aunt when she’s in danger and impaling her possessed sister with a wooden stake, Fisher’s shining personality brings her character straight up to icon status among the children of the horror genre.
The screenplay also plays a part in the film’s genius, moving with a bloodthirsty appetite for cruelty as well as comedy. Full of iconic one-liners and the nastiest of quips, the film is sure to leave audiences quoting lines like, “Mommy’s with the maggots now” and “I’m not a f****** groupie you psycho f****** bitch!” for decades to come.
Despite the film’s bloodstained glory coming from all directions, the thick red glue that holds it all together is Cronin’s direction. Cronin took on the challenge of a soft-reboot revival of a beloved franchise like a true horror fan, carefully balancing the thin line between honoring a rich history and creating a new world of terror with its own distinctive feel.
“The thing that I love about Evil Dead movies and that I wanted to maintain was the kind of energy and the gutsiness and the madness,” Cronin said.
And maintain he did. The energy is turned up to the highest notch the franchise has seen since the phantasmagoric “Evil Dead II” (1987) with gallons upon gallons of blood spewing from every crevice — and orifice. But Cronin didn’t just dump blood on the same old concept; He renewed it, finding creative ways to shed blood in the claustrophobia of the new setting all while bringing back the famed chainsaw to its full spectacle of bloody glory.
Perhaps the reason “Evil Dead Rise” is so successful is because it’s made by someone who understands the fans of the genre. Cronin himself grew up watching horror movies, and you can see their influence throughout the film. A sea of blood crashes out of an elevator, nodding to the classic shot in “The Shining” (1980). The cinematography of the opening sequence is reminiscent of modern horror favorite “Midsommar” (2019). And the wailing, flailing and flesh-eating deadites ring true to the original Evil Dead movies themselves, perhaps more twisted than ever before. Cronin knew what the fans wanted and what the franchise needed. Taking notes from the Necronomicon, he revived a blood-soaked franchise and drowned it in a thick red pool of ingenuity.
Blending horror and black comedy together in a way that enhances both rather than taking away from either, Cronin has created a master class of the horror reboot in “Evil Dead Rise,” a film all horror fans need to see in theaters faster than they can say “Khandar estrada khandos thrus indactu nosfrandus khandar dematos khandar.”
