Category Archives: 2023

Film Review: Oppenheimer – 2023

Director(s)Christopher Nolan
Principal CastCillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Downey Jr. as Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss
Emily Blunt as Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer
Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock
Release Date2023
Language(s)English
Running Time 180 minutes
Report Card Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

We see droplets rippling in a pond outward into circular reverberations and then get a glimpse at this phenomena’s perceiver, Oppenheimer (Cilian Murphy), our protagonist, who relates this watery vision against one predicated on a countervailing elemental source, a world of fire, flames pluming out and flowing as a liquid, a state of plasma, an analogous movement to the echoing droplets.

From this point on, we’re treated to a variety of visuals which evade traditional classification as their scopes cannot be disambiguated. Visions of fire remain indeterminable as they take one of two roles depending on perspective: either they represent molecular entanglements of atoms blasting against one another or they are eruptions of flames on a scale familiar to us, eruptions that we would traditionally classify as such vis-à-vis our “naked” eyes.

As the montage of these visions continues, text eventually intervenes into the frame describing a divine story: “Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.” A tale of divinity rendered contiguous with a visual plane depicting these flames from a scientific vantage point – this dichotomy is one that will seep into and develop through the film.

Accompanying this concisely phrased religious summation is an increasingly intense rumbling which enters the soundscape, source undetermined, which crowds out all other noises.

The sound continues until we cut to the visage of our phenomenological observer whose eyes are resolutely closed. Once he opens them up, the deafening, unidentifiable stamping noise immediately dissipates – a vision broken through as its dreamer wakes up. A supertitle, “Fission”, appears on the frame, setting the start of the formal patterns which will segment the film from this point on.

Oppenheimer begins to read a statement regarding his life to the audience and its filmic analog, persons which he regards as judges, while he explains that his decisions can only be evaluated against such a grand narrative. Meanwhile, the crowd evaluating the same refuses this classification as judges, clarifying that they instead serve as members of a security board – a semantic distinction operating as bureaucratic gesture.

Immediately, the film cuts to a close-up of another man, Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), with the supertitle of “Fusion” appearing on the frame. This new filmic subject comments on the previous scene, explaining that Oppenheimer engaged in his aforementioned testimony for a month. He’s informed that he will be forced to explain his position towards the Oppenheimer security hearing, an issue which still divides America, in his confirmation hearing but is assured that this is not a trial – an inverted echo of the earlier statement from Fission wherein the audience clarified they were not judges, the prosecutors of a trial.

Thus, from the start the film the two formal strands by which it bifurcates itself, the colored world of “Fission” and the black-and-white world of “Fusion” are explicitly tied to the point-of-views of two distinctive men respectively, Oppenheimer and Strauss, who each find themselves at the heart of their own respective hearings which bear the markings of trials but are officially not classified as such while they’re forced to justify their lives. These two sections act as assemblages, gaining formal powers as the film continues to build a series of relationships and explicit patterns that define these partitions and grant them the power to frame the content they depict in radically distinctive fashions.[1] DeLanda, M. (n.d.). In Assemblage Theory. introduction. These two chronologies will come to stand-in for a variety of ideas, separate from one another, constantly inviting the viewer to ascertain the reasons for such distinctions.

“Fission”, as per its molecular namesake, is predicated on the manner in which parts collide with one another, splitting into one another to create products in a chain reaction.[2] Fission and fusion: What is the difference?. Energy.gov. (n.d.). https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/fission-and-fusion-what-difference Consequently, the section is associated the realm of the “subjective”, taking the mental projections of its associated character, Oppenheimer, as the atoms to split in the process and demonstrating this chain reaction through a fragmented chronology featuring a host of surreal images and quantum interludes like those featured in the opening.

“Fusion”, likewise, is based another molecular process, occurring when two atoms slam together to create something greater. The process is shorter-lived but has a much greater power.[3] Fission and fusion: What is the difference?. Energy.gov. (n.d.). https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/fission-and-fusion-what-difference This section, the shorter of the two, indexed towards Strauss as opposed to Oppenheimer, makes sense of the fragmented nature of “Fission” and puts it back together, weaving the interstices of the aforementioned hearing and the context surrounding it into a newly consolidated image, one based in “realism”, a move away from the realm of the “subjective” to the world of “objectivity”, the world of bureaucratic power.

These are opposite processes, one based on separation and the other on collision. Whereas “Fission” is shown in full color, letting the various hues of the spectrum bounce around the frames, “Fusion”, is shown in black-and-white, an intentional choice which ties it to the mode of classic cinema, a gesture towards tradition. The film will intercut between these two paradigmatic approaches in regards to the same subject matter, that of Oppenheimer’s life, from two different vantage points whose relation to one another develops and informs the audience of the truth behind “power” and the manner by which it relates to the subjects it governs.

We cut back to Fission where Oppenheimer begins to recount his days as a student back in Europe, a time he explicitly recalls as less than satisfactory as the “visions of a hidden universe” troubled him. These visions, some of which we’ve already seen in the opening, come back into fray, adopting a wholly new color scheme more in line with the rain and its reverberating droplets, serving as molecular interludes. Like Terrence Malick did with his cosmic interludes in his opus, The Tree of Life, to frame his story about a family, more specifically a boy from that family now grown up, dealing with personal pain, against the backdrop of the creation of the universe, thus raising the particular to the level of the universal, director Christopher Nolan does here, using the molecular interludes as a cosmic stand-in, tying together the different strands of Oppenheimer’s life to the very forces underpinning them.

Thought itself is rendered corporeal as these moments are rendered with the same intensity as Oppenheimer’s actions in the world around him. They become an interface between the physical and the metaphysical through their surreal depiction which grants them the same visual status as the world that Oppenheimer finds himself navigating.

We see him do science in a lab, but he’s not nearly as skilled in working in this domain as he is with traversing the ones in his mind and accidentally breaks glassware. His professor, Blackett (James D’Arcy), chastises him for the mistake and orders Oppenheimer to stay in the lab to clean up while the rest of the students and staff go to attend a lecture on quantum theory by Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), Oppenheimer’s personal idol.

This perceived slight upsets the young scientist who takes matters into his own drastic hands. He sees an apple on a table – the Edenic symbol of man’s eventual corruption and Fall. He reaches for poison and injects the fruit with it, transforming it from a source of nourishment into an object of death, a perversion in purpose.

He runs through the rain to get to the lecture hall, coming in right as Bohr is speaking about the manner by which quantum theory offers a new way to understand “reality”, a way to peer through into a “world inside our world” made up of “energy and paradox.”

This explanation brings Oppenheimer no peace as this newfound reality continues to assault his senses, haunting his waking visions. His only course of action is to go into the world of his dreams. His eyes close.

The molecular matter transforms into the night sky, stars taking the place of atoms. The fiery explosions become domesticated into the peaceful warmth of a fire. This is a precious memory, one that brings peace. Here, Oppenheimer tenderly feeds a horse an apple from his hand, granting sustenance to his furry friend.

But then he wakes and thinks back to the apple. The fruit of comfort from his dreams has become a nightmare enacted by his own hand in reality. He runs back to the classroom to get rid of this marker of sin and sees Bohr in the classroom. The two engage in dialogue. It’s revealed that Oppenheimer has seen Bohr in another lecture hall and had asked the latter the same question at two different occasions in an attempt to get another answer, a better answer.

Bohr issues a slight warning, another Edenic allusion: “You can lift the stone without being ready for the snake that’s revealed.” Lurking behind quantum theory is a world of probabilities which may not offer comfort and instead only point out visions of filled with sin. It’s no coincidence that Bohr says as much while holding the apple that Oppenheimer so desperately wants to throw away. Finally, Oppenheimer grabs at it and throws it away, claiming the fruit suffered from a “wormhole.” This excuse has a double meaning, referring to either a hole in the fruit dug through by a worm or the scientific structure professed through Einstein’s works which can connect distinctive points in space-time; religious symbolism and scientific inquiry are once again linked to one another.

With potential death now out of the way, the older scientist tells his scientific fan to go to Germany to learn the ways of theory, likening the science to sheet music. The question is not whether Oppenheimer can read this music but whether he can “hear it.”

It’s at this moment when composer Ludwig Göransson’s monumental score truly lifts off and sweeps Oppenheimer and by extension the audience off their feet, as the aptly titled track “Can You Hear the Music?” dominates the aural plane as Nolan and editor Jennifer Lame weave through a plethora of seemingly discrete images in a wonderful montage that lasts nearly 90-seconds.

We see majestic establishing shots of skylines and cities, Oppenheimer exploring the beauty of cathedrals while bathing in their luxurious glasswork, equations being written on boards, a host of molecular interludes now freed from their former domains as they appear in the frame with Oppenheimer himself, an effect of the wonderful practical effects being used which makes science surreal through seamless juxtaposition. A poignant moment in this mixture involves a set of tracking shots, pushing in on both Oppenheimer and Picasso’s “Woman Sitting With Crossed Arms”, a cubist representation of a woman which flattens her dimensions into one smooth visual representation.

This flattening effect is the point of the montage and the reason that music is framed as a method by which to engage in the sciences as Oppenheimer’s mind treats all these distinctive images of the world, of sciences, of art, of nature, of buildings, of equations as part and parcel of the same ontological fabric, operating on the same plane and waiting for someone to connect them together. Far from being discrete images, the procession invites the audience to join Oppenheimer in processing the way that these shapes and representations fire off from one another, atoms splitting from another in a chain reaction.

And then the magic abruptly ends.

The color, creativity, catharsis crumble in the cracks of bureaucracy as the film cuts back to Fusion. Strauss is tasked with explaining his relationship with Oppenheimer, a task he was not expecting to deal with during this Senate Confirmation hearing, and flashes back to his own past and experience with the scientist we’ve spent the film’s run-time with up till now.

In this past, Oppenheimer is rendered arrogant and ignorant, casually demeaning Strauss with a variety of statements even though it’s unclear if he intended to do as much. Our newfound positioning with Strauss paints these comments as clear insults with no basis. From his view, he’s offering a job at one of the most prestigious institutions with a slew of benefits and is experiencing an unjustified pushback.

Their conversation comes to a pause when they spot Einstein (Tom Conti) at a pond near the facility. Strauss questions Oppenheimer’s decision to not involve the esteemed scientist in the Manhattan Project. The latter explains that the Father of Relativity wouldn’t embrace the quantum world his theories revealed which Strauss pins down to Einstein’s statement on the same: “God doesn’t play dice.” The statement, an indictment of the lack of definitive order necessitated by quantum theory, serves as an interesting counterpoint to Oppenheimer, a character who has been and will continue to be tied to the divine. Scientific paradigm is transformed into an act of faith. Which way will he leap?

Strauss offers to introduce the two but Oppenheimer brushes him off and goes to meet off with Einstein on his own terms, explaining that the duo has been acquainted for many years. But when Strauss attempts to approach the couple, Einstein brushes past him and walks off, ignoring the would-be introducer.

Power has been usurped and Strauss attempts to elicit a reason for such behavior from Oppenheimer, but the latter refuses to give up any information and instead turns the conversation to the contents of his security file, a point of concern for the scientist being asked to take a prestigious position at the Atomic Energy Commission. Strauss confirms that Oppenheimer’s act of patriotism vis-à-vis his work on the Manhattan Project is demonstrative proof of his loyalties and that any compromising information from said file should have no bearing on his status – a fact that we know is a lie given the way Fission starts in and is framed by a meeting to determine Oppenheimer’s security clearance. The film’s form and chronology thus introduce a question, how have we gotten from here to there and will lay the roadmap as it progresses.

We cut back to the present where Strauss’s inquisitors question the Cabinet Nominee on his knowledge of Oppenheimer’s past associations and why such knowledge didn’t concern him. He explains, in a seemingly joking manner, one which we learn is not the case at all and know based on the antagonist posturing of the duo in the flashback, that he was instead entirely consumed with what Oppenheimer “must have said to Einstein to sour him on” Strauss.

The crowd laughs at what they think is a humorous bit, but the mood is once again silenced by the governmental machine who persists in their questions. They ask Strauss if these concerns came up later. He responds: “Well, we all know what happened later.” It’s here that one recognizes the chronological circuitry the film is playing with, rendering time in one formal strand as a past that the other one can access; past, present, and future all become relative as they’re placed in proximity to one another and Strauss’s retort reveals this because the “later” he refers to is an event we’ve yet to see based on our vantage point from the “past” being showcased in Fission.

We cut back to Fission where Oppenheimer discusses his initial meeting with fellow countryman and scientist, Isidor Rabi (David Krumholtz), who is quickly impressed by our protagonist after witnessing him give a lecture on quantum theory entirely in Dutch. Oppenheimer departs the lecture location on train, seeing rain droplets and quantum visuals on the reflection on the window pane, before Rabi enters his compartment and formally introduces himself, drawing Oppenheimer’s attention away from the window pane, a plane where science and nature intertwine with one another, to the other side of the cart where human interaction waits.

The two men find themselves similar in many fashions – Jewish, American, Scientists. Their identity displaces science as the topic of conversation and the milieu’s anti-Semitism is brought up. Given the nature of the film, it’s no wonder that these partitions will become more relevant both within the larger context of the story and within these character’s lives, as these markers of their selves will be manipulated by systems of power. But for now, there are no immediate tensions and Rabi extends a helping hand, a gesture of kindness, by giving Oppenheimer nourishment in the form of fruit. A friendship is born.

The duo sets out to meet the premiere German quantum scientist Werner Heisenberg (Matthias Schweighöfer) who gives a lecture on quantum mechanics, a response of sorts to Einstein’s earlier quotation, where he explains that speculations of a “real” world bound by order, causality, lurking behind probabilities comprising the quantum world are fruitless to speculate on. Read through the framework of divinity hitherto set-up, this summation is an refutation of the Apollonian promise of God, a pure affirmation of the metaphysics of the dice roll where paradox rules.

After the lecture, Oppenheimer converses with Heisenberg and the two share their mutual admiration for one another’s works, both cut from similar scientific cloth, but Oppenheimer’s focus lays elsewhere: America. He wants to go back and spread the scientific gospel in his home nation, a fire to be lit for the masses waiting in the dark.

He comes back to the States, accepting positions at both Caltech and Berkeley, and starts his rise. Quickly making friends with the faculty, he rises to the task at hand and amasses a huge following.

The in-scene editing demonstrates the massive pull of his influence. We start on an empty classroom and one student, Lomanitz (Josh Zuckerman), walks in and attempts to leave upon ascertaining the situation. But Oppenheimer quickly starts to speak and begins to spout on about the paradoxes of quantum theory with such exuberance that the young Lomanitz ends up sitting in.

We see Oppenheimer write on the board, cut to Lomanitz’s enthused reaction, and then cut back to Oppenheimer who begins to leave the board. But as he walks away and goes throughout the room, we realize that we’ve cut to the future; the classroom is now filled with students eager to learn more.

Suddenly, a discussion of a star’s gravity breaks out. We see one of the earlier interludes which is now retroactively determined to be a star contracting due to the force of its gravitation pull being stronger than the force of its furnace pushing its fire out. Gravity condenses the star which triggers a seemingly infinite reaction wherein gravity and density cause the other to increase. Oppenheimer is positioned like this star, his brightness and exuberance pushing out colors and drawing in influence, but as his influence wanes, the gravity of the situation he finds himself in, the forces of bureaucracy, condense his situation into an ordeal that gets so much bigger than him.

We cut back to Fusion as if on cue, a reminder of these governmental forces at play and the manner in which they curb the projection of color, and Strauss explains that Dr. Oppenheimer’s file started while he was at Berkley because of his connection to left-wing political activities.

Another cut – this time to Fission – to a chalkboard filled with a political announcement as opposed to the normal equations which fill its space, politics in lieu of science. This development is chastised by Oppenheimer’s faculty peer and friend, Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), who issues a warning to keep politics out of the classroom, a fortuitous warning indeed given what we know will happen.

But Oppenheimer persists and pushes back, likening their revolution in physics to similar revolutionary movements in the humanities by thinkers such as: Picasso, Stravisnky, Freud, Marx. This explicit reference serves as a continuation of the ontological flattening demonstrated by the “Can You Hear the Music?” montage, wherein all revolution in thought is cast in the same light. But his line of thinking isn’t ubiquitous, and the conservative leanings of Lawrence come out when he retorts that America has already had its revolution, a paradoxical affirmation that approves of a previous revolution, an upending of values, but refuses to do the same again, a commitment to the status quo.

The duo departs and Oppenheimer heads to a Communist meeting with his brother, Frank (Dylan Arnold), and the latter’s partner, Jackie (Emma Dumont), where he has his first chronological encounter with the powers of politics that be: federal agents are taking pictures of the attendee’s license plates, obviously creating a registry of political thinkers that don’t align with status quo tendencies.

It’s at this meeting that Oppenheimer meets with future friends, acquaintances, and one of his life’s great loves, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), who challenges his lack of commitment to the Communist cause. Though he’s sympathetic to their thoughts and ideologies, Oppenheimer is very much a pragmatist whose commitment is less to a single truth than it is to a variety of thoughts which all contain aspects of that. But what appears as “wiggle room” for him appears as lack of dedication to others, and his journey is one that will see him pulled apart by all relevant sides as they try and force him to commit to one system once and for all.

At first glance, the tapestry that is the film seems too massive a task to engage with. Within these first 20-minutes, we’ve been introduced to: a plethora of characters, each important in their own right; discussions related to the arts, sciences, politics, faith and juxtapositions of those ideas against one another; multiple time-lines that are further bracketed into the Fission and Fusion segments which eventually showcase the same actions from different vantage points; an overarching story which constantly breaks its chronology and introduces images and plot points shrouded in mystery, waiting to be retroactively determined and put together in sequence by the spectator as the film continues.

But Nolan consistently demonstrates how fully in control of the viewing experience he’s in. Conversations which may prove to be daunting are edited in kinetic fashion, making wonderful use of Göransson’s score, which plays almost for the film’s entire run-time, ensuring a consistent propulsive force that drives the narrative forward; we’re always aware of exactly what we have to pay attention to so we don’t lose the plot so to speak. When characters are referenced, the film wonderfully cuts to images of them to remind the audience of who they are, but these moments also work formally as we’re firmly latched into a point-of-view which would be thinking back to these faces while talking about them. The visual schema stays compelling in spite of the heavy dialogue laden scenes through the use of wonderful establishing shots, surreal images that break reality, and the lower shot-length in general which ensures there’s always something new on the screen to latch onto.

However, the script itself is arguably Nolan’s finest, featuring razor-sharp dialogue that flows and exudes charisma while neatly layering in sub-text within the text, thematic overtures which build to deafening crescendos as the viewer slowly pieces together the formal pieces of the puzzle together into a much larger, multi-faceted tapestry.

There are the surface level ideas involving moral culpability especially in relation to one’s politics. We know Oppenheimer will build the nuclear bomb, a weapon of mass destruction, a genocidal force, but he will do the same because his country demands it. This neatly leads into the larger discussion on politics proper, whether or not good citizens can have distinctive ideological ideas or if having them compromises them in their ability to fulfill their duties as patriots, whether or not being a patriot is justifiable in lieu of one’s obligations to humanity in general.

Then there are the deeper ideas involving science and religion, the way the latter and former are inextricably tied as explanatory mechanisms for the world and the manners in which they align and diverge from one another, the potential impossibility in reconciling beliefs from one domain with beliefs by the other and how the framing of these ideas within these particular discourses affects the way they’re treated by persons and society at large.

All of these throughlines and more are allowed to collide against one another and recapitulate into new discrete moments because of the formal partitioning of the film, Fission and Fusion, which transform the film into an apparatus of quantum theory itself. The memories of the respective characters serve as the atoms, distinctive vantage points of the same situations demonstrating the way that such a molecule can easily split. The editing serves as the catalyst that galvanizes these collisions and leads to the chain reactions, the explosive power that is transformed into epiphanies that only become clear when scrutinized and analyzed via the vantage points the film offers.

The point is not to push the audience towards a capital T “Truth” but instead to explore the way verisimilitude is generated through power and perspective. As Friedrich Nietzsche puts it: “There is only a seeing from a perspective, only a “knowing” from a perspective, and the more emotions we express over a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our “idea” of that thing, our ‘objectivity.'” [4]Nietzsche , F. (1887). Third Essay. In O. Levy (Ed.), H. B. Samuel & J. M. Kennedy (Trans.), On the Genealogy of Morals. essay. Retrieved from … Continue reading Nolan wholeheartedly embraces this epistemic approach in Oppenheimer, approaching his titular character’s life from as many perspectives as possible in an attempt to understand the father of the nuclear bomb, the American Prometheus and give reason explaining why he did what he did.

REPORT CARD

TLDROppenheimer is Nolan’s multi-perspectival exploration of his titular character, broaching the subjectivity of this one person and the magnitude of their nuclear decision via a plethora of vantage points. Whether it be the drama, the analysis of war, the moral deliberations, spiritual exploration, or the formal examination of the way subjectivity is produced through the levers of power, there is something for anyone willing to grab onto one of these throughlines and see it through to the film’s end.
Rating10/10
GradeS+

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Film Review: Evil Dead Rise – 2023

Director(s)Lee Cronin
Principal CastLily Sullivan as Beth
Alyssa Sutherland as Ellie
Morgan Davies as Danny
Gabrielle Echols as Bridget
Nell Fisher as Kassie
Release Date2023
Language(s)English
Running Time 97 minutes
Report CardClick 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

TLDREvil 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.
Rating9.5/10
GradeA+

Go to Page 2  for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .