‘Evil Dead Rise’ is horrifically delightful
“Mommy’s with the maggots now.” Lead actress Alyssa Sutherland’s favorite line from the latest movie in which she stars is a perfect distillation of its plot; at the core of “Evil Dead Rise” is the story of children who have ostensibly lost their one remaining safety net. In her place is a horror few will be able to look away from.
Newly single mom Ellie (Sutherland) is struggling to hold everything together, living in a condemned Los Angeles apartment building with three children. Shortly after Ellie’s younger sister Beth (Lily Sullivan) drops in for an impromptu visit, an earthquake leads siblings Danny (Morgan Davies), Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Kassie (Nell Fisher) to stumble upon a book that will forever alter their family.
“Evil Dead Rise” is terrifying in all the right ways. The cinematography is gripping and the acting is top-notch. The sound design puts you on the edge of your seat, and the set design drops the audience into an immersive and claustrophobic world they’ll be itching to claw out of by the time credits roll.
Bringing “Evil Dead Rise” to life was a massive undertaking for those involved. The actors endured intense physical training to prepare for the unreal stunts. Special effects supervisor Brendan Durey was tasked with concocting more than 6,500 liters of fake blood to accommodate the film’s unique needs. Stephen McKeon, the film’s composer, sacrificed his grand piano to achieve the perfect sound by taking knives to the strings. The result is frenetic, fractured and eerie.
Several individuals from previous installments joined the “Evil Dead Rise” team. This includes Sam Raimi, who returns to the series as an executive producer. But director and screenwriter Lee Cronin didn’t shy away from bringing his own take to the franchise.
“If you’re gonna break the mold, you’ve gotta break the mold, right? So, the appetite between me and Sam [Raimi] was to tell an ‘Evil Dead’ story that was something new, something fresh and a little bit different,” Cronin told the Daily Trojan in a roundtable interview Tuesday.
Sutherland said the opportunity to play the role of Ellie made her especially eager to work with Cronin.
“What made me want to work with [Cronin] was the script and the role of Ellie because certainly as a woman, I just don’t have roles like that come my way,” Sutherland said in a roundtable interview with the Daily Trojan. “It’s so rare. But watching his first film ‘[The] Hole in the Ground’ is what really made me want to work with him. Watching the performances that he got with the actors that he worked with in that film, I was like, ‘Sign me up, I want to work with him.’”
Sutherland and Sullivan both embraced the challenge of their roles wholeheartedly.
“[It was] so fun to explore the terrifying fear that the sanctity of home is no longer safe … It just becomes this epic washing machine of obstacles and chaos,” Sullivan said.
Themes of family and home are central to the film’s plot throughout. The family’s bonds are put to the test when the supernatural infiltrates their walls and possesses Ellie, their matriarch and key source of strength.
“It’s a place of comfort and joy, and then if you start to subvert that, you can start to play a lot of fun and games as a horror filmmaker,” Cronin said. “In this story, we’re also meeting a family that [is] going through some change and some challenging times, and then those cracks are open for the evil to work their way in and make things even worse.”
The Pacific Renaissance and Wild Atlantic Pictures production is presented by New Line Cinema and Renaissance Pictures, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. “Evil Dead Rise” will hit theaters April 21.