Evil Dead Rise - Movie Review
Evil Dead Rise - Movie Review
Critics Score - 7 of 10
General Audience Score - 8 of 10
SYNOPSIS - This trip into a world of the undead starts with a camera shot of a stream with green forest on either side that goes sliding by as the camera moves along it. All of a sudden we come out onto a lake, we pass by a boat on the shore and cruise out over the water, the camera staying a few feet above the water. After banking to the right, a dock with a woman sitting on it comes into view, she has headphones on and is reading a book. As the camera zips by her, she jerks her head up startled, we see the drone fly off and a guy walks out onto the dock with a pair of goggles on and we understand that this guy has been in control of what we’ve been seeing. She yells at him but then goes inside the secluded cabin they’re staying at, their friend Jessica isn’t feeling well and is in bed asleep. After sitting down in the room with her sleeping friend to do some reading, her friend Jessica sits up in bed and begins reading from the book, Jessica is facing the opposite way from her on the bed, her voice growing more menacing as she speaks. She approaches Jessica but Jessica falls off the bed onto the floor, her mouth foaming as she seems to be having a seizure. Without spoiling much, Jessica attacks the girl who then runs outside to her drone flying boyfriend and they have a showdown with the possessed Jessica. Eventually Jessica falls into the lake before slowly rising out of the water, her fingers clenched into a claw like grip. As she ascends, we see her outstretched feet finally escape the lake’s surface and a gorgeous shot of her hovering over the lake is seen. The camera looks up from the water, her figure is almost black against the sky with the sun going down over the hills behind her, the film’s title rises in red letters over the hillside. The undead are back in town.
The scene changes and we’re informed that what we’re now seeing is one day prior, we’re behind the stage at some kind of rock show, the low lighted and graffitied restroom door conceals Beth (Lily Sullivan). In the darkly lit room with a pale blue light being the only exception, Beth sits and stares straight ahead at a wall with a disfigured face and sagging eyes painted on it as she unwraps a pregnancy test and urinates on it. She leaves the show in the dark and rainy night, like a scene out of Blade Runner, and makes her way to her sister Ellie’s (Alyssa Sutherland) apartment. We meet Ellie, rock music playing as she’s working at home with her three children, the teenaged Danny (Morgan Davies) and Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and their pre-teen sister Kassie (Nell Fisher). After an earthquake, Danny and Bridget find an old bank vault inside a hole in the floor of a parking deck. Because you don’t get outside of an age old apartment building after a quake, you stick around to explore, so that’s what the teens do. After crawling down inside, Danny finds a bunch of religious relics, some records and a book, could it be some kind of book of the dead? The worn brown cover and teeth like hooks would’ve been enough to keep me from messing with it, but the screenplay insists we press forward. After he plays one of the records of a voice reading passages from the book, all hell breaks loose, quite literally, as a demonic force takes control of his mother and she begins an assault on everyone in her apartment building, family first.
Let’s start this assessment with the writer and director of Evil Dead Rise, Lee Cronin, who has done The Hole In The Ground and a mishmash of other horror movies, shorts and TV shows. The man clearly has a knack for the dark and supernatural, he has a good eye for this genre and this effort was solid as far as his ability to create a good but not exactly great piece of cinema. In the horror genre, there are several other big studio films in recent memory that are more effective in accomplishing the thrills and scares, Smile and The Black Phone from last year, even Nope comes to mind. Evil Dead Rise was naturally very dark, the story and atmosphere matching the lack of light to be found in pretty much every scene and set, which I give Cronin the credit for creating a fitting tone for the film. But the screenplay, while serviceable, was unfortunately also a little predictable and forgettable, but I’m not sure how much of that may be attributed to studio interference and forcing him to “color inside the lines” as he went about the writing process. As I mentioned earlier, there are some impressively well composed shots and the cinematography, although very dark, does have some highlights of cinematic flair. While the pacing starts out a bit meandering, it picks up some steam through the second half, the edgy score from Stephen McKeon with violin work, drums and plenty of screeching adding an assist in helping to push up the tension along the way. This film doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the scary movie formula, it simply tries to tread water and give you more of what you’d expect from a big studio horror film. Although it succumbs to many of the tropes that you’d expect, it is still quite entertaining for what it is and while it might be forgotten quickly, in the here and now it’s not too bad of a ride.
SYNOPSIS - If you’re a big fan of the franchise, of blood and guts, or gory horror films, chances are you’ll get your money’s worth from the price of admission, just from blood volume alone. This entry in the franchise certainly proves entertaining while delivering mostly standard viewing fare, but unless you have a propensity towards this kind of horror, this Evil Dead film probably won’t get too big of a Rise out of you.
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