Evil Dead Rise
An unstoppable demonic force unleashes a series of grisly party tricks in the fifth instalment of the forty-two-year-old franchise.
Sibling rivalry: Lily Sullivan
What was once fresh and innovative now smells pretty putrid. Stretch any franchise far enough and the odour of repetition becomes overpowering. When Sam Raimi cooked up The Evil Dead in 1979 (on a budget of $375,000), he shook up the horror community. Since then, his little film has led to a TV series, a stage musical, various comic books, six video games and four sequels. And so the deceased demons rise up again, released from the pages of the Book of the Dead – aka The Necronomicon. This dusty tome, whose arcane passages are scripted in human blood on pages fashioned out of human skin, turns up in the strangest places, much like a Shakespearean folio. But unlike the 233 books of the Bard, there are only three volumes of The Necronomicon (thank God), which is the literary version of a TV remote. Open its leathery covers and the evil dead arise – yet again.
The opening scene replays Raimi’s signature POV tracking shot, this time relayed by what feels like a drunken drone hurtling through woodland until narrowly missing the head of Teresa (Mirabai Pease), who’s perched on the edge of a jetty reading Wuthering Heights. Then – hey presto! – we find out that it is a drone, a device that goes amok before the opening title reveals that we have been witnessing the mandatory prologue, before the real principals of our story our introduced. A caption states ‘One Day Earlier’ and we are introduced to the occupants of a condemned apartment block on a dark and stormy night. The latter are Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), her three children, and her sister Beth (Lily Sullivan) – and family tensions are running high. Then an earthquake puts their differences into perspective. It is at this point that Ellie’s son Danny (Morgan Davies) finds an ancient book in the wreckage of the basement and brings it upstairs. Stupidly, he opens it…
Shot for a modest $19 million in Auckland, New Zealand, much of the new film’s budget has obviously gone on the effects. Its Dublin-born writer-director Lee Cronin proudly disclosed that around 1,717 gallons of fake blood were employed. One scene in particular, either homage or theft, is witness to a tsunami of blood gushing out of an elevator and down a corridor. But it’s the more subtle moments, such as a soldering iron introduced to an eyeball, that register the greatest impact. There’s a good deal of ingenuity here, but the repetition of shock effects in the claustrophobic setting diminishes over time as it becomes apparent that Evil Dead Rise is little more than a side show of gore.
Better, though, are the performances, with Lily Sullivan and Alyssa Sutherland both bringing some human gravity to their parts, while the 11-year-old Nell Fisher, as the latter’s daughter Kassie [sic], looks suitably disturbed throughout. But what lets the film down is the lack of a propulsive storyline and the clichéd sound effects, with the same old creaking and scraping that we have come to associate with demonic entities. And when one can anticipate the next jump scare five seconds in advance, it’s apparent that the film is losing ground. However, the worst offender is the omnipresent orchestra, whose rasping string section is perpetually on hand to overlay a sense of sonic déjà vu. Horror fans may get more than they bargained for, but it’s hard to imagine that it will give them any sleepless nights.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, Nell Fisher, Mirabai Pease, Richard Crouchley, Anna-Maree Thomas, Mark Mitchinson, and Bruce Campbell (voice only).
Dir Lee Cronin, Pro Rob Tapert, Screenplay Lee Cronin, Ph Dave Garbett, Pro Des Nick Bassett, Ed Bryan Shaw, Music Stephen McKeon, Costumes Sarah Voon, Sound Peter Albrechtsen, Dialect coach Jacque Drew.
New Line Cinema/Renaissance Pictures/Pacific Renaissance/Wild Atlantic Pictures-StudioCanal.
96 mins. New Zealand/Ireland. 2022. UK and US Rel: 21 April 2023. Cert. 18.
