Evil Dead is in my opinion one of if not the most fascinating horror franchise. The original is a charming low budget horror effort, Evil Dead II is almost a remake that just ups the blood and goofiness in the best way, Army of Darkness almost forgets about horror and offers a weird medieval story, and then the 2013 remake takes away the fun and gives one of the most brutal and wince-inducingly gory movies I've ever seen. And that brings us to Evil Dead Rise, something that falls somewhere in between the camp of the old and the aggression of the new, and I kinda loved it.
The film isn't really a direct sequel to any of those past movies, it's more a new story using the iconography and ideas of the franchise but doing their own thing. The story follows a woman named Beth that visits her sister and nieces/nephew in a rundown high rise building soon to be demolished. After an earthquake unearths the book of the dead, some trademark horror movie silly decisions unleash a curse on the family.
I'm gonna start by giving love to the performances, which I really really appreciated. Lily Sullivan plays the lead Beth and I thought she was great. She's a badass and brings us one of the best final girls of the past while, all while delivering a sensitivity towards the children in the film that worked really well. Alyssa Sutherland plays the sister who is possessed for most of the film and... just magnificent, she is so unhinged in movement and vocals throughout, equal parts terrifying and hilarious I thought she was terrific. The two older kids played by Morgan Davies and Gabrielle Echols were both solid, but Nell Fisher as the youngest was the perfect youthful charm that we've just never gotten in one of these films.
Now onto the technical elements which I also loved. The cinematography from the very beginning is a big win here. There's a lot of really visually stunning shots which I obviously loved, but it's the consistently exciting framing that wowed me, especially some shots through the peephole of the apartment's front door or some shots where something sneaks behind the character in focus. The sound design also works really well in building suspense in interesting and fun ways. While the 2013 film relied on graphic gore for it's scares (not that that's a bad thing I do enjoy that film), this has a lot of very clever set pieces and circumstances to create strong tension and genuine scares which I didn't expect. Don't get me wrong, there's some gore, but aside from one sequence none of the violence was enough to make me curl up in a ball like the remake does.
All in all this is a really interesting entry in the franchise. It's funnier than the 2013 remake and gorier than the originals, offering a good in between point that worked really well for me. Thought I might not love it but this is one I'll probably revisit a lot down the road.\
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