Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Rating: 7.0

TL;DR - Evil Dead Rise is a movie that I spent most of my time watching looking at the floor… so I think that makes it pretty clear it’s an effective scary movie. Evil Dead fans will love this horrific, bloody gore-fest of a film, but I preferred the more campy horror-comedy style of the original Raimi films! Quite the disturbing watch for me, but quite the effective, mean, and groovy horror film.

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Film Info:

Premise: A twisted tale of two estranged sisters whose reunion is cut short by the rise of flesh-possessing demons, thrusting them into a primal battle for survival as they face the most nightmarish version of family imaginable.

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Warner Bros

Written & Directed by Lee Cronin

Cast: Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, Nell Fisher

Runtime: 1hr 37min

Rating: 18A

Horror

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IMDb Rating: 7.3/10

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

RT Audience Score: 80%

RT Critic Average: 7.2/10

RT Audience Average: 4.1/5

Metacritic Score: 69

CinemaScore: B

Letterboxd: 3.6/5

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Fun Fact: The film was originally meant to release exclusively through HBOMax via direct-to-streaming, but it performed so strongly during test screenings that the studio decided to release it theatrically instead.

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Review:

written by Tyler Park

Yep, Evil Dead Rise scared the shit out of me. Mind you, I am very easy to scare… but this was one mean, unforgiving, disturbing movie! And isn’t that all you’d want from a horror film? Sure, it may not be what I love movies for, but fans of horror will love this movie! It just wasn’t my cup of tea. I saw this because I was a fan of the original Sam Raimi/Bruce Campbell Evil Dead films and was curious to see what a modern Evil Dead film would look like.

Well, I sure did find out… or at least I sorta did.

I may or may not have spent most of the movie watching the floor instead of the screen.

This movie got to me. It is so creepy and unsettling, with really gnarly moments of gore and violence. It’s genuinely so fucked up at times. I can’t unsee some of what happened in the film, and it had me wincing a whole lot. I was scared. For me, this might have been one of the scariest films I have ever seen in a theatre (but that could also be the recency effect talking). There were times I thought I couldn’t handle it (and I am someone who is normally okay with gore), but in the end, I made it through! And I’m glad I saw it, for what it’s worth it is a very effective horror film and people who love this kind of thing will go nuts for it!

There are some excellent (and terrifying) makeup effects, some awesome (and creepy) sound editing, and some really atmospheric cinematography. I definitely liked the campy horror-comedy vibe that the original films had better than the tone this one struck, which was more committed to the horror. So I did miss the elements I liked from the Evil Dead films, but what they retained did work really well. It doesn’t attempt to reinvent the franchise, it just picks and chooses what it wants to keep. Still, the change in character and location did go a long way to offer up a fresh perspective, and Lee Cronin’s direction does have this gnarly, nasty, and creative feel to it that really makes this one stand out. Plus Alyssa Sutherland was fantastically unsettling as the mother, completely going wild with her performance (and scaring the shit out of me in the process).

This movie definitely wasn’t for me, it was just a little too disturbingly intense. While it may not be what I’m looking for in a movie, it was quite well made and did its job as a horror flick well. Lots of blood, gore, and creative deadite scenes (tattoo kit and a cheese grater to name a few…). Fans will love it, and I’m sure it’s lots of fun to see with a crowd. Just not my thing.

That title card was legendary though!

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Trailer: