It looks like the one thing that can be guaranteed about the newEvil Dead Riseis that there will be blood - lots and lots of blood. Lee Cronin, the director of the latest movie based on theEvil Deadfranchise, tweeted a handful of behind the scenes stills as he celebrated the end of filming on the new movie which will once more bring the Deadites of the Necronomicon out of the darkness and into the lives of some unsuspecting victims. While it is always a welcome sight to see another round ofEvil Deadmayhem, anEvil Deadmovie without Bruce Campbell’s unlikely hero Ash Williams always has a bit of a mountain to climb for fans of the franchise, so canEvil Dead Risechop its way to hail the king? Well it does have a few things going for it.
“8 months, 1 Covid Lockdown, 6,500 litres of blood, and more memories than my brain can even process. That is a wrap on[Evil Dead Rise]. Thank you New Zealand, it’s been a blast. Time to head home and cut this beast together,“Lee Cronincommented while posting images of bloody shoes, bloody shoe prints and a bloody director.
The latest attempt to revive theEvil Deadis both written and directed by Cronin, who made his directorial debut withThe Hole in the Groundin 2019 and also collaborated withoriginal Evil Dead creator Sam Raimion the horror anthology series50 States of Fright. Raimi, and indeed Campbell, are both on boardEvil Dead Risein an executive producer capacity, and that in itself can surely only be a good thing as far as keeping the feeling and tone of the movie in line with the previous outings goes.
The Evil Deadmovies have always been a prime example of a cult classic movie, originating as an extremely low budget, experimental film created by friends, that made a little bit of money on its release but over time gained a legacy that money cannot buy. Of course, that legacy was aided greatly by theVideo Nasty era, whenEvil Deadseemed to take the biggest beating by censors and those actively fighting against excessive violence in movies, and for that reason worked its way to becoming an almost legendary benchmark in horror movies at the time.
Along with the horror though,The Evil Deadhas always had a sense of its own ridiculousness and keeps its tongue firmly in cheek whether someone is beating themselves up with their own hand, or hacking off a head with a chainsaw. You know, all that kind of fun stuff. In many ways, that was where the 2013 reboot movie lost its way a little and garnered a whole host of mixed reviews depending on what you went into the movie expecting. If you werelooking for bloody violence, then there was plenty of that, but the film mostly took itself too seriously the torturing of its leads became much too dark to bring any kind of humor to proceedings.
According to the blurb, inEvil Dead Rise"a road-weary Beth pays an overdue visit to her older sister Ellie, who is raising three kids on her own in a cramped L.A apartment. The sisters' reunion is cut short by the discovery of a mysterious book deep in the bowels of Ellie’s building, giving rise to flesh-possessing demons, and thrusting Beth into a primal battle for survival as she is faced with the most nightmarish version of motherhood imaginable.” Like the reboot, the movie once again brings in female leads, with Alyssa Sutherland and Lily Sullivan taking on the roles of Ellie and Beth, with the rest of the cast being made up of Gabrielle Echols, Morgan Davies, Neil Fisher and Mia Challis.
When it comes down to it, Cronin was chosen by Raimi to continue theEvil Deadsaga, and we can only hope that he has made the right choice. The movie will not go to cinemas though and will instead go straight to streaming on HBO Max in the US sometime later in 2022.
