Evil Dead Rise

Along the treach­er­ous road to adult­hood, we all set per­son­al goals for our­selves as a way to prove that we can be self-reliant when it comes to our devel­op­ment as human beings. These can be epic under­tak­ings, such as read­ing the entire­ty of Émile Zola’s Rougon-Mac­quart cycle as a way to under­stand the lat­ter half of 19^th cen­tu­ry French social his­to­ry. Or they can be more mod­est in scale, such as in my case, where I placed a lot of for­ma­tive ener­gy into try­ing to see the ful­ly uncut ver­sion of Sam Raimi’s 1981 splat-tac­u­lar, The Evil Dead.

As a teenag­er, I owned (and cher­ished) the 4 Front Video release of the film, which was sub­ject to numer­ous cuts due to a hang-over from the BBFC’s much-pub­li­cised moral pan­ic about so-called ​“Video Nas­ties”. My mem­o­ry of the man­gled film is vivid and fond, and I remem­ber feel­ing that who­ev­er made the cuts had done so in a way where the view­er would know that some­thing juicy had just been excised. Like, the sound would sud­den­ly drop out of sync, or the con­ti­nu­ity would fal­ter for a split sec­ond. I want­ed more than any­thing to see what was between the cuts. I was a kid ver­sion of the ​“Sicko” meme. Maybe I still am?

I would love to think that writer-direc­tor Lee Cronin shared this expe­ri­ence, though even if he didn’t, it’s clear from his new film Evil Dead Rise that he has stud­ied Raimi’s opus on that same mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el. It would seem declassé to refer to this as a ​“fran­chise exten­sion”, a ​“reboot” or a belat­ed ​“sequel”, as the film is more of a recon­struc­tion or a study or a remix of the orig­i­nal. The same sto­ry, as told from a fresh, mod­ern angle. And it absolute­ly slays…

If there’s one thing the Evil Dead has taught us, it’s that we must do every­thing in our pow­er to avoid inton­ing a mys­ti­cal demon­ic incan­ta­tion in the pres­ence of the flesh-bound­/blood-inked Book of the Dead, as very bad things will ensue. Here, Alyssa Sutherland’s sin­gle-mom tat­tooist Elle is get­ting set to move out of her dilap­i­dat­ed apart­ment block with her three kids. A tremor uncov­ers a dusty vault in the base­ment, inside which, wrapped in a parch­ment and held inside a bug-infest­ed tomb is our old friend.

Cronin bal­ances the set-up to may­hem equi­lib­ri­um per­fect­ly, lay­ing out the frag­ile fam­i­ly dynam­ic while adding in the wild-card ele­ment of Elle’s estranged sis­ter Beth (Lily Sul­li­van) and leav­ing the view­er to pon­der which sib­ling will turn out to be the Ash of the piece. This sim­ple but high­ly effec­tive ground­work does so much to under­pin the sec­ond-half gore explo­sion with an ele­ment of pathos, and I’ll admit there’s a sim­ple shot which comes direct­ly after one of the most vis­cer­al effects blow-outs that near brought a tear to my eye.

While there’s a lov­ing homage ele­ment to the film, Cronin isn’t mere­ly attempt­ing to ape the hys­ter­i­cal dynam­ics and acro­bat­ic cam­era moves that Rai­mi made his trade­mark. The dis­patch­ing of vic­tims is car­ried out with a sim­i­lar atten­tion to detail and a desire to make each body a new can­vas for some sick-mak­ing muti­la­tion or oth­er. Tonal­ly, Evil Dead Rise is most like the orig­i­nal Evil Dead, in that it doesn’t opt for the slap­stick wig-outs of the sec­ond and third films, even though its absurd humour shines through in just how relent­less­ly OTT every­thing is.

The only real crit­i­cism here is the tacked-on and point­less pro­logue and epi­logue which feel like they’ve been added as a way to lay a path for a sequel, but I guess it’s a case of Cronin being a vic­tim of his own suc­cess. Oth­er­wise, this deliv­ers the euphor­ic and cleans­ing hit of allow­ing a blood tsuna­mi to crash over you. And it doesn’t make you want to revis­it the orig­i­nal to see what could have been, but more as a way to gauge the intri­ca­cy and fideli­ty of what Cronin and his team have achieved. It’s like see­ing the full glo­ry of the uncut orig­i­nal for the first time, and I can’t be more com­pli­men­ta­ry than that.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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