Evil Dead Rise (2023)

I finally caught up with the late installments in the Evil Dead franchise. Sam Raimi’s original trilogy worked itself into an inspired Three Stooges mode that remains utterly original and worth seeking out. But a lot of people forget how actually terrifying as a horror movie the first one was, even with the low-budget trappings, or that’s how it hit for me anyway in the early ‘80s one weekend with rented VCR and movies. The 2013 remake and this, what? sequel?—are true to the essentials of the 1981 original. The roving demon spirit is represented by impossibly fast tracking through landscape, there’s an evil book made of blood and human body parts, and the possessions begin when the field recording made by some anonymous paranormal researcher scientist is played. On the recording he says the words that summon the demon spirit to take possession and from then on it’s chaos. Also there’s usually a scene of an animated tree raping one of the young woman victims, in usually a mixed group of five. There to honor the original apparently. You never know where a tradition is going to come from. The 2013 remake, directed by Fede Alvarez (Alien: Romulus; Don’t Breathe), is perfectly competent but has few surprises and became a little monotonous for me in the last third. Evil Dead Rise switches things up while remaining true to the essentials. Perhaps its boldest move is to change the setting from the famous “cabin in the woods” to an urban landscape in Los Angeles. An earthquake unearths the Naturom Demonto (updated from the trilogy’s Necronomicon Ex-Mortis for reasons unclear, perhaps an effort to leave behind any suggestion of the H.P. Lovecraft universe). The cracked vault also yields up field recordings by the researcher. The kid making the discovery is a wannabe DJ. He knows what to do with recordings, which look like 78s but play differently. The possession target is a single mother with three kids. Her sister is visiting. They have a tense relationship. As usual in this franchise, it gets bloody and gruesome. Check all content warnings. The tree thing is replicated inside an elevator. True to the trope! Yes, there were scenes of grotesque violence that were hard to watch, usually short. But director and writer Lee Cronin also has a lot of nifty tricks up his sleeve and there are a surprising number of surprises. Definitely worth running down if you’re into the franchise.