‘Evil Dead Rise’: Almost but not Quite Groovy (Spoilers Ahead)
by Thomas Schultze
“Evil Dead Rise” is a horror movie, and that’s all I could say after watching it.
It has the elements of what an “Evil Dead” movie should be, with all the blood, possession, and crazy scares, but even with all that, it’s not what I’d call a good “Evil Dead” movie. I can’t say it’s a bad movie, it just feels underwhelming in a lot of places, especially when compared to the first three “Evil Dead” movies. This movie has elements from those movies, but it doesn’t live up to its potential.
For instance, at the beginning of the film, the girl who’s possessed by the demon grabs a drone. I thought she was going to use the drone to chop up her friend with the spinning blades, but then she just uses it on herself. It wasn’t as creative as I was hoping for along with the writing. The demons who possess the characters give off an ominous presence and you can tell that they have fun torturing their victims, but they feel sort of downplayed compared to “Evil Dead’s I & II.” In the earlier films, trees and household objects came to life, headless corpses were dancing, and all these twists and turns where you didn’t know what was going to happen next. In “Rise” it felt predictable just like any other modern-day horror movie with the scary stuff being the demons just screaming and lunging at the characters with little to nothing added.
I feel like Lee Cronin could have explored new ideas even with the small budget. For instance, he could have made the apartment feel like it was possessed much like in “The Evil Dead.” He could have had air vents sucking in the characters and spewing out their blood and bones or he could have had drawers grow teeth and bite off a character’s hand only to spit it out with the hand coming to life and trying to strangle the characters. I didn’t expect something big, but I did expect something new. Even with these ideas not being in the movie, I feel like the least he could have done was deliver ideas that were already in the movie to their full potential. Show us a scene with the guy getting chopped up by the drone and show the demon doing crazier and somewhat sillier things, other than just screaming and looking scary. Those ideas feel creative and it’s that type of over-the-top craziness I’d pay to see in an “Evil Dead” movie.
Also, I’d like to point out one plot hole. There’s one scene where the protagonist opens the window to her three-story high apartment and shouts to a homeless man for help. If she can easily open the window to her apartment, why don’t the characters just gather up every pillow, blanket, and couch cushion to throw down to the floor and jump down onto and escape the apartment? Sure, it’s a horror movie, and poor decisions are bound to be made, but I can’t help but wonder why none of them come up with that idea in the first place.
As for the good stuff in this movie, I will admit that it doesn’t hold back on the gore, and the makeup artists did a good job making the characters look possessed. The acting is solid, and I did start to enjoy the film a little more at the end with the elevator filling with blood and all the possessed characters getting melded together to form this demonic human semi-monstrosity. Although I do think the design of the monster could have been better rather than just looking like four humans melded together. I like the scene where they get torn apart in a woodchipper that just so happened to be in the parking garage. There are some intense scenes like when the records of the Necronomicon are being played awakening the dead.
In the end, “Evil Dead Rise” is just another horror flick. If you’re looking for a guilty pleasure horror flick with blood, gore, and a lot of screaming, this film is fine. As far as the “Evil Dead” movies go, there can only be three good “Evil Dead” movies. “The Evil Dead,” “Evil Dead II,” and “Army of Darkness.”
Say cheese!: Things get ugly in "Evil Dead Rises." (Warner Bros. Pictures)
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