Written by Cameron Geiser

If I hadn’t explicitly seen the credits roll without the name Sam Raimi attached as the director of the film, I would have assumed that the horror director had returned to the franchise he started decades ago. That is high praise coming from me, someone who quite enjoys and respects the work of Raimi (Oz The Great and Powerful being the lone exception). No, this bloody film is brought to us from writer/director Lee Cronin, a name I will now be on alert for. Evil Dead Rise excels in expanding The Evil Dead mythos established in Raimi’s films while exploring new ideas with the same familiar architecture of those films.

If you’re familiar with the franchise there’s a lot to love here. Bookended with the familiar cabin in the woods setting, the majority of Evil Dead Rise is set in a dilapidated old apartment building in Los Angeles. This new urban nightmare has some delightfully insane evolutions while sticking to the core tenets of any good Evil Dead movie. You know how it goes, eventually someone will open the book of the dead, no matter how many signs there are warning you not to do so, which is practically inviting demonic forces to possess your friends and loved ones with violent intentions. This time around the characters are a family living in said soon to be demolished apartment. Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) is adapting to being a single parent as she raises her three children, the two teenagers Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Danny (Morgan Davies), and the youngest of the bunch, Kassie (Nell Fisher). Ellie’s estranged sister Beth (Lily Sullivan) also arrives just before everything erupts and despite the two of them being very different people, Beth still looks up to her older sister when she needs some advice.

If you’re a fan of any *Evil Dead* film and want to see the same style tell a different story, *Evil Dead Rise* has got you covered.

After a strong earthquake rips through their neighborhood and reveals an old bank vault filled with curiosities beneath their parking garage, Danny crawls into the abyss and climbs out with a book and two vinyl records. As an aspiring DJ, and the horror genre requirement of including at least one dumb teenager, Danny opens the book of the dead with Bridget and plays the vinyl records, thereby letting Evil loose in the world. As you may expect, once everything falls into place mayhem and murder run rampant for the remainder of the runtime. I could gush about this film for far too long, but only because it perfectly exemplifies everything great about the Evil Dead films. Most importantly, this film absolutely nails the tone and energy of Raimi’s films. This is exactly what was missing in Fede Álvarez’s 2013 remake of the original. That film may have had all of the prerequisites down, but it lacked the signature taunting, playful menace that the deadites (the in-universe term for the recently possessed) typically trade barbs in. Evil Dead Rise doesn’t rest on its laurels though, it extends this pitch black humor to the entire cast, and constantly turns up the intensity from scene to scene.

Cronin’s eye for the crazy evil that is all but required in this franchise makes it stand toe to toe with Raimi’s work. From the preference for practical effects (no CGI blood here, looking at you Renfield) to a deliberate escalation in creative violence and pacing that will feel overwhelming at times, this is another excellent addition to the series. At a heart-racing 96 minutes, Evil Dead Rise earns its place in the franchise and has me giddy with anticipation for the future of both the Evil Dead franchise and what Lee Cronin does next!

Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.