(Preface: I'm a casual fan of the entire Evil Dead series, seen 'em all. I absolutely love the Ash vs Evil Dead show and its goofiness as well as the 2013 remake with it's focus on carnage and gore)
Saw this at the Overlook Film Festival in NOLA on April 1st. Eh. The 2013 remake was so much better to me. That one was at least chaotic, wild, and had a firm horror tone. Evil Dead Rise was so entirely predictable throughout that each time something predictable was about to occur, I told myself "Nah...that's too predictable, they'll subvert my expectations." only to have it play out exactly as I had predicted.
There were some very heavy-handed moments of foreshadowing, almost as if the audience needed to be force-fed the foreshadowed moments. I'm talking camera focusing on some object or action for a good 3-5 seconds while slowly zooming in so you know the movie is gonna come back to that "forgotten" or "random" thing later. Also, don't expect the concept of a high rise with Deadites to present the chaos and scariness of Deadites running rampant from floor to floor, room to room, while tearing people apart. Nah. The action is mostly relegated to a single floor and a parking garage. They could have done so much more with the idea of Deadites in a high rise building.
Even the gore was not as gnarly as the 2013 version. I didn't wince at anything in Evil Dead Rise apart from the way somebody gets stabbed at one point. Meanwhile, almost every attack in the 2013 flick made me either wince or think "Okay, they're gonna cut, they aren't gonna fully show that....wow, they showed that entire sequence without censoring it, damn.". The cheese grater scene in this is nowhere near as great as people are hyped about. It's rather tame and didn't live up to my expectations at all. When it happened, I was like "Huh. Alright, that would suck, but it also didn't cause anywhere near as much damage as I thought it would. Okay, then.". By the way, this isn't the only "shocking" scene either. There are a few more that they have not alluded to in trailers!
I dislike when movies do that thing where they have a character say a line or do a thing...and because they don't know how to naturally or realistically proceed from there, they simply have the character pass out, lmfao. They did it in the 2013 flick when somewhat possessed Mia walks into the middle of the cabin in front of everyone and declares "You're all going to die tonight!" before passing out and dropping like a sack of potatoes. Evil Dead Rise does this, as you've probably seen in the trailers, by having a possessed Ellie bone crack her way up a shower wall, settle into the corner/ceiling, and proceed to scream so loud (for a good 15 seconds) that the water in the tub boils (alright, that was kinda cool), shit shatters around the bathroom, and the characters clench their hands over their ears in discomfort. How do they follow-up a character deciding to randomly scream for 15 seconds while spider clinging to a ceiling? They make her pass the fuck out and fall into the tub of water, of course. I feel like they only include this shit so they can put it in trailers for a "cool looking" or "spooky" moment and it makes me cringe a little.
I will say this: if you're expecting a film more in tone with Evil Dead 1 or the 2013 remake...I would say that is 75% of Evil Dead Rise. Surprisingly, the other 25% is goofballl slapstick shit and corny one liners a la Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness, and Ash vs Evil Dead...just not completely to the same degree. The balance between the two tones was not that bad beyond the actions of certain characters, including the villain(s) being idiotic at times. The movie did have style and some cool moments but it was just far too predictable to ignore and the characters in this had that "anime paralysis syndrome" thing...you know...where something crazy is happening or an enemy is powering up and the main characters just sit there staring and shuddering and muttering instead of either running and getting the hell away or using that as their chance to attack. It happened so many times in this movie that it was distracting because of how unrealistic it was. Oh, be prepared for a few jumpscares. This movie enjoyed deploying those. The kind that coincide with extremely loud sounds.
After all that shit talking, I did in fact enjoy Evil Dead Rise! It just...can't compare (gore/horror-wise) to the 2013 remake and when shit gets silly, it's the kind of silly that you need to be in a packed theater to properly somewhat enjoy. Lore-wise, it only touches on connections/lore during one scene which seems to connect it properly to the Evil Dead realm and the 2013 Evil Dead realm (making this the third realm). If you're a fan of Army of Darkness, you'll know what I'm referring to. So yeah, for me, I enjoyed the film but it's Evil Dead, so you're kinda meant to simply turn off your brain and soak in the silliness/campiness/horror of it all. I feel like this is not even close to as good as SXSW critics are claiming it is, they must have seen a better cut of the film or something lmao. But it isn't quite SYFY original bad or anything like that. I truly wish Evil Dead Rise played more with the idea of Deadites overrunning a high rise, but that just isn't what you get in this film.
P.S. The acting of the cast was pretty good, apart from the teenage boy/son and the one-note cartoony neighbors who briefly appear. Ellie's youngest daughter is so damn adorable and has a few funny moments. The little girl playing her does a great job and is mostly believable/realistic in her portrayal. The teenage girl is decent but she really shines later in the movie. Ellie (the mother) and her sister and main character, Beth, are both great. Ellie's actress does an awesome job portraying a Deadite and honestly, it sucks that she gets turned into one because her life already sucked leading up to that. Beth is pretty believable and enjoyable in her character's ability to rise to the occasion and protect her sister's children. None of the characters truly annoyed me, apart from the teenage boy who stood around stuttering like Krillin in a fucking DBZ episode most of the time. Dialogue wasn't too terrible overall and they get going with the main stuff fairly quickly after an unrelated opening scene to set the tone as well as filling the audience in on little bit of backstory once Beth and Ellie meet up. Quite a few lines made me chuckle, especially when they'd say some sarcastic or smart-ass shit. We get to see what each of the three kids are up to as we're shown their bedrooms with them inside and we get a peak into their personalities and how they interact with one another as well as towards their mother and Beth. After that, shit goes down and incantations are inadvertently spewed, and it's time to survive against evil (which is what we all signed up to see anyway!).
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Yeah, that'll definitely get me to buy a ticket... NOT
