| Director(s) | Lee Cronin |
| Principal Cast | Lily Sullivan as Beth Alyssa Sutherland as Ellie Morgan Davies as Danny Gabrielle Echols as Bridget Nell Fisher as Kassie |
| Release Date | 2023 |
| Language(s) | English |
| Running Time | 97 minutes |
| Report Card | Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary |
We open with the Evil Dead Franchise’s iconic shot, a spectral point-of-view (P.O.V.) tracking shot, which pushes and bends through the environment in search of an unsuspecting person who will be made the victim of this malignant force, referred to as a deadite, viewing them. The score becomes increasingly unnerving as the camera moves, signaling a terrifying presence. As the soundscape continues to become more disturbing, the camera finishes traversing through a forest and zooms over a lake, traditional horror iconography to be sure, before coming face-to-face with an unsuspecting woman, Teresa (Mirabai Pease), who immediately recoils upon contact.
Based on all the clues, we’re convinced that she’s been destroyed by this otherworldly, cosmic presence. However, a cut to a wide shot reveals that the P.O.V. we were following was not that of a deadite but that of a drone being flown by Teresa’s acquaintance, Caleb (Richard Crouchley), who takes great pleasure in the manner by which he elicited fear from his camera’s subject and captured it on frame. In this manner, the film’s opening subtly equates the supernatural gaze with that of the upper class looking for entertainment at the sake of someone else’s misery.
Upset at being made a fool of, Teresa walks away from the pier and goes towards a cabin for comfort. The distorted composition along with the context of the genre (and franchise) immediately informs us that this is where things will go wrong. Director Lee Cronin ensures of as much with a series of wonderful aesthetic choices.
When Teresa enters the cabin, we see her reflection in the glass of a clock, whose foreboding ticks slowly encroach and dominate the soundscape. The camera’s focus shifts and her reflection within the domain of the clock becomes a focal point. Her time will run out; this much is certain. The film cuts to a wonderful split-diopeter, one of many that punctuate the film, which emphasizes that this space is malevolent; Teresa is akin to a fly in a trap, waiting to die. As she enters the inner-most room, she is once again positioned in reference to the clock and its sounds fade out as the barrier to the room is opened; the moment is almost here.
She calls out to the room’s inhabitant, Caleb’s partner, Jessica (Anna-Maree Thomas), but Cronin deftly avoids revealing the latter’s visage; she remains covered in a shroud of mystery.
Jessica remains mostly unresponsive to Teresa’s banter, slightly chucking when the former makes a violent joke in response to Caleb. The lack of discourse prompts Teresa to read a book, Wuthering Heights, to pass the time. However, this solitary literature session is interrupted by the previously silent occupant, who sits up on her bed and begins to recite the text on the page – text which the camera cuts to in order to reinforce both the terror of the words being recited along with the action – without any prompts. The sound of the clock violently stops while Jessica’s voice becomes increasingly distorted, causing Teresa to beg for the phenomenon to stop. Time is up.
It’s at this point that Cronin lets us see Jessica’s face, but almost instantly, the demonic sounding girl falls to the floor and begins to vomit a grotesque, vile bile while shuddering violently. Teresa, unaware of what’s to come, tries to help but is caught off guard when Jessica reveals her helplessness was but a ruse; she proceeds to violently scalp her friend by pulling the former’s ponytail with great force.
We cut to a new P.O.V. shot that stumbles towards the lake and learn that this is Teresa, looking desperately for help. But before she can get Caleb to act, we cut to a canted shot of Jessica entering the frame. The possessed is now fully in control of the situation and the framing emphasizes as much; her body and the effects of her violence – the bloody scalp – dominate the frame. She moves towards the drone and then stares at the camera, gazing directly at her former friends and the audience proper. She smiles. The violence to come will be enjoyable for her, terrifying for her friends, and will be somewhere in the middle for the audience; after all, what else would a viewer going into an Evil Dead movie expect?
She bashes this representative of the faux-spectral P.O.V. shot and proceeds to decapitate her former boyfriend after he tries to save her from the same.
The water in the lake becomes a bloody red and Jessica flies up out of it; there will be no escape. The disturbing soundscape from the opening returns in full force. Then, in a brilliant move, the title card rises up behind her, emerging as furthest back element of the frame in full crimson glory. The film can now properly begin.
We cut to black, the sound drops, and we change settings entirely. Like the 2013 attempt at rebooting the franchise, the 2023 iteration draws the viewer in with a small helping of violence, a promise that what’s to come will satisfy their desires, before going to develop the primary cast. Here, our first member, Beth (Lily Sullivan), enters a bathroom and takes a pregnancy test. She sees her result and the frame becomes canted as the camera slowly pushes in on her face; the discovery of her newfound status as potential mother is treated as a horrifying event.
She drives to a dilapidated apartment building as the rains beat down on her. We cut to an apartment inside this structure and are introduced to our other primary characters: Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), a mother who works as a tattoo artist; her older daughter, Bridget (Gabrielle Echols), whose interests lie in political activism; her son, Danny (Morgan Davies), who is having a blast with his state of the art music set-up; her younger daughter, Kassie (Nell Fisher), who seems to be doing her own thing, cutting off the head of a doll as if to remind the viewer of the film they’re watching.
As the chaos in the house enfolds, Ellie responds to a ring at the front door and goes to answer. She opens the door and sees no one. She checks a corner. No one. The camera slowly pushes in on her; for just a moment, we’re concerned that the evil from the opening has come here. But right as Ellie turns to go inside, Beth appears from the other side of the door, shots “Boo!”, and gets appropriately punched in the face by her sister. This inoffensive jump-scare, a trick played by one family member by another in an attempt at eliciting fear for entertainment, hearkens back to the opening sequence and sets the stage what’s to follow: the cute moment’s perversion into the grotesque and macabre.
Thus, the principal characters are established and we’re given just enough bits and pieces to ascertain the family dynamic. We learn that Beth has been distant from her sister and niblings in pursuit of her own career. However, in this time, her sister, Ellie, has had to deal with a separation from her own husband and the responsibility of maintaining a household on her own. To make it worse, Beth learns that her sister is set to lose her residence as the building is set to be demolished. This is a condemned environment.
Unfortunately, Ellie’s previous attempts to convey this information to Beth have fallen on deaf ears, as the latter has been so focused on her craft that she has ignored calls for help. The awkward revelation gives Ellie an excuse to send the kids out for food so that the adults can find a way to deal with the alienating tension between them.
Beth realizes her mistake and is upset with her lack of action. Ellie forgives her sister and subsequently attempts to probe the reason for this surprise visit. However, before Beth can reveal that she’s concerned about her potential tangle with motherhood, an earthquake erupts and disrupts the already shoddy environment further, preventing the conversation from going any further.
While the adults try and stabilize in the apartment, the children, who are located in the garage, duck for cover. However, the aftermath of the quake reveals the foundations of their apartment building, a bank, lurking underneath. A newly created gap offers a way to untold riches and Danny decides to explore in order to potentially find something of value.
Yet, his exploration, in true Evil Dead fashion, is filled with a litany of symbols and objects that would scream to any other person to “stay out!” In contrast to his aunt’s earlier playful jump-scare, a statue of Jesus Christ literally jumps out from a corner in an attempt to deter him from his ill-founded material pursuits. But Danny persists, ignoring the warning sign of the holy entity, and finds a set of vinyl records before uncovering a grotesque tome, the iconic “Book of the Dead”. This discovery marks the beginning of the end and the film consequently cuts to Ellie staring forward at the camera, letting us know that evil is imminent.
In customary fashion, evil, supernatural hymns are recited, cosmic horrors enter the fray, and our group of characters are forced to find a way to survive against an immensely powerful malevolent force that takes immense pleasure in enacting the sickest, most twisted forms of violence on its victims. From this view, the plotting of this latest entry in the iconic Evil Dead franchise goes mostly as one would expect.
However, Cronin distinguishes his rendition of the Evil Dead from the rest of the franchise’s mainstays through his exploration and deconstruction of the spectral P.O.V. shot. If the opening wasn’t enough of a clue, an early conversation between Beth and Kassie draws textual attention to this point of focus, as the former party informs her niece that she doesn’t believe in ghosts because she can’t see them.
Thus, we are made aware that it is the gaze that is relevant and the film serves as an extended analysis of the way that its functions, both in regards to ourselves and within cinema, operate in relation to and through violence of different sorts. We are being asked: In what ways does our perspective of what is and is not violence change based on our perspective in relation to the phenomenon and its effects.
But Michael Haneke’s Funny Games this is not, and the analysis is mostly limited to simplistic thematic domains, namely to traditional thematic overtures regarding the family structure and manner by which it operates a kind of communal barrier. While the film’s set-up includes multiple angles by which to position said discussion and offer nuance into multiple domains, the limited deployment of its techniques ossifies the possibilities inherent within them. The thematic playground the film finds itself playing in is so much smaller than the space its elements give it access to and the way it dances with its cinematographic exploration, though deft, barely scratches the surface of the space it seeks to explore. In other words, the film’s area of focus is compelling and it judiciously utilizes both genre conventions and the franchise’s own history in pursuit of the same, but it limits its purview within artificial-feeling trappings that feel disappointing given the skill on display.
These commitment issues extend to the film’s tone which feels like it’s trying too hard to please all the myriad of fans, all of whom enjoy different aspects of the multi-faceted franchise. At times the film plays it straight and acts like a pot-boiler thriller with terrific pacing and frights abound. Every relevant plot element is neatly set-up à la Checkov’s gun and there’s very little fat as the film moves to its rhythm. The scares are neatly executed with subtle cues, few jump-scares, and mostly excellent sound design which helps accentuate the mean-spirited nature of the visceral horror set-pieces, playing on the ability of the genre to get viewers to imagine such violence’s happening to them. But right as the terror hits a fever pitch, the film will awkwardly toss aside the momentum for strange detours, like slapstick jokes found in Evil Dead II, which completely dissipate the tension and stop the pacing dead in its tracks.
Rises’ reliance on sticking to a formula also prevents it from gaining any new converts or impressing fans who are more so interested in the worldbuilding promised by the franchise. If you’ve seen any of the films before, you’re already going to know where and how the majority of the narrative will proceed which leaves only the spectacle remaining, and while that spectacle is stylized as all hell and is certainly visually evocative, it still does not approach that critical point at which the work feels transformative and wholly its own.
Instead of trying to be a terrifying thriller, a gory spectacle for splatter aficionados, a dark comedy for the horror-jaded, an examination of violence in relation to cinema for the theorists, and wholly honest to the plethora of expectations engendered by the franchise, the film should have given upon the juggling act and truly committed to the most congruent of these elements so that it could transcend itself in the way that certain parts of the film would suggest it would be able to do otherwise. Of course, it’s difficult to criticize a film when the criticism is aimed at its desires to please everyone, a task which it mostly does based on discussion surrounding it, but inevitably, upsetting some in favor of experimentation that pushes the needle forward is the only way to make a long-lasting mark and it’s disappointing when a film this fantastic doesn’t quite live up to that type of potential.
REPORT CARD
| TLDR | Evil Dead Rises is an ambitious, wonderfully stylized piece of work that deftly utilizes genre trappings and the conventions of the franchise to deliver a filmic experience that should please most of the fans it seeks to impress even if its attempt to do the same inevitably lowers its own artistic ceiling. |
| Rating | 9.5/10 |
| Grade | A+ |
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
