The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C+
I love the original Evil Dead trilogy and it’s a very unique trilogy for a couple of reasons. First, the tone varies wildly between films. The original The Evil Dead is a straight horror film, Evil Dead 2 is a horror comedy (and, by a slim margin, my favorite entry) and Army of Darkness is a fantasy comedy. It’s quite an accomplishment for a series to change its tone, and even its genre, while still have an overall feeling that is distinct unto itself. Second, it is the only major horror series in which the iconic character is the hero. Sure, one could make an argument for Ripley in Alien or Reggie in Phantasm, but those movies also have iconic villains in the Xenomorph and the Tall Man. With Evil Dead, the star is unquestionably the double-barrel shotgun toting, chainsaw-armed Ash.
With such a unique legacy, new entries have a challenging task ahead of them. The absence of Ash looms large and, with him or without him, the style and spirit of the original trilogy are hard to replicate. Much like with Evil Dead (2013), Evil Dead Rise chooses to stick to the more pure-horror tone of the original movie. Although Evil Dead 2 is my favorite in the series, I don’t necessarily have a problem with that choice. Also much like the 2013 movie, Rise tries to introduce a new character as a replacement for Ash. Consequently, Rise shares many of the same problems as the last movie. While this isn’t necessarily a bad horror movie, it just doesn’t feel like an Evil Dead movie.
Aside from completely superfluous wraparound scenes set in a cabin, Evil Dead Rise moves the action to a high-rise apartment building in Los Angeles. Our lead is named Beth (played by Lily Sullivan), who is visiting the apartment of her sister Ellie (played by Alyssa Sutherland), who is the single mother of two teenagers and a younger kid. The building is rocked by an earthquake, which reveals a hidden room beneath the parking garage. The kids investigate the room and discover a whole bunch of creepy shit, including the Necronomicon and a bunch of records, which they take back to their apartment because they have apparently never seen a horror movie before. As you might expect if you’ve seen an Evil Dead movie (or The Gate, for that matter), the kids unwittingly summon demons and the family must find a way to survive.
The biggest problem with Evil Dead Rise is that it doesn’t feel like an Evil Dead movie despite significant efforts to mirror the original The Evil Dead. The plot shares a number of parallel plot points with the original movie. For example, the discovery of the book in the cellar in the original is like the hidden chamber in Rise, the destruction of the bridge in the original is like the destruction of the staircase in Rise, the demon banging on the cellar door is like the apartment door in Rise, etc. So, in some ways, this is just as much of a remake as the 2013 movie despite the change of location. The change of location doesn’t even amount to much, as the film does very little to take advantage of the larger space, isolating our characters on a single floor for most of the film and, therefore, just recreating the claustrophobic setting of the cabin anyway. It also invites comparisons to the very similar but superior Demons 2 (from 1986), though the director has said that he hasn’t seen Demons 2 and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that.
The issue is that this often feels much more like a modern possession horror film than it does an Evil Dead movie. I feel like I’m being redundant since I just reviewed The Pope’s Exorcist, but I am ungodly tired of these cliches. I’m tired of joints bending at awkward angles and people crawling up walls. Could we please work together as a society to come up with something different for possessed people to do in horror movies? Is that too much to ask? Additionally, the film goes a long time with a single demon before escalating matters in the last act, leaving me quite underwhelmed for the majority of the running time. If there is anything than an Evil Dead movie shouldn’t be, it’s boring and Rise often tested my patience during the first hour or so. The trademark zaniness and breakneck speed are gone and replaced with a much more plodding pace that doesn’t feel right in this series.
When it does finally introduce some traditional elements in the last act, it comes across as pandering fan service. In particular, the sudden emergence of the Beth character as the equivalent of Ash (including the appearance of a double-barrel shotgun and chainsaw) feels completely unnatural for the character. After spending an hour with her, it is eye-rolling to suddenly hear her look at a demon and say “come get some.” This is a character development that would be better left for a sequel (if it must be done at all), as the transition here feels like suddenly going from The Evil Dead to Evil Dead 2 in the course of ten minutes and its frigging jarring.
It sounds like I’m shitting on this movie, but I’m actually giving it a slightly higher grade than I initially intended. In retrospect, this isn’t a bad horror movie. It has some really solid gore, especially by modern standards. It’s not the bloodbath of the first two movies, but, in an era when people tell me that Megan is a great horror movie, this is gory as hell by those standards. The performances are also solid. Although I don’t buy Beth as our new Ash, Lily Sullivan is a solid and endearing lead before she is forced to evoke Bruce Campbell. Alyssa Sutherland is particularly notable as Ellie, especially when she goes into demon mode. Even though the film goes through all of the possession cliches, Sutherland sells the hell out of it and gives as creepy of a performance as possible within the creative constraints that she’s given.
I wonder what someone would think of this if they have never seen an Evil Dead movie before because, while I don’t think it works very well as an Evil Dead movie, I could see it working better as a standalone horror movie. So if you have never seen an Evil Dead movie before this, I have two questions for you: 1. What the hell have you been doing with your life? and 2. Am I being too harsh on this movie?
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_Dead_Rise#/media/File:EvilDeadRiseTeaser.jpg
