The Evil Dead movies have always been a grab bag of tones and genre conventions, but Evil Dead Rise can give the franchise the one thing it’s been missing. Blending slapstick comedy, serious scares, and borderline-cartoonish amounts of gore, the Evil Dead films have never been afraid to mix it up. This is true not only of the movies themselves but of the franchise as a whole. The first entry, The Evil Dead, tells the story of Ash (Bruce Campbell) and his four friends as they try to survive the demonic forces they unwittingly unleashed while holed up in a remote cabin. It’s more or less a straight-up horror movie, but even at this early stage, there’s enough frenetic camerawork and over-the-top gore to portend the zaniness to come.
The second movie, Evil Dead 2, finds Ash back at the (conspicuously in-tact) cabin from Evil Dead, battling his own disembodied hand after it becomes possessed by demonic forces. Here, the scares share equal billing with the laughs, as Ash’s literal mano-a-mano battle evokes The Three Stooges and other slapstick classics. By the third movie, Army of Darkness, in which Ash time-travels to medieval Europe, all notions of genre have been thrown out the window. From movie to movie, there isn’t a lot of continuity. Except for the demonic possession plot device and, weirdly, Ash’s scars, the most they have in common might just be their eclecticism. Despite that, there is one piece of tonal territory the franchise has yet to explore, but with Evil Dead Rise, that could soon change.
Of all the words that could describe the Evil Dead movies, poignant isn’t one of them, but the latest sequel Evil Dead Rise, releasing in theaters in 2023, will give the franchise the emotional resonance it’s been missing. Sam Raimi is not a sentimental filmmaker, by laughs or by screams, his original Evil Dead trilogy just intends for its audience to have fun. When Fede Alvarez stepped in to reboot Evil Dead in 2013, his story about an addict whose friends bring her to a remote cabin to help her kick heroin gave the franchise its first hint of sincerity, but only a hint. The addiction story was just the setup, an excuse to get all the characters to the cabin. Once they’re there, any pretense of themes or subtext quickly gives way to carnage for carnage’s sake. The franchise would hang in limbo for the next decade as plans for new movies, including a sequel to Alvarez’s reboot, a Raimi-helmed Army of Darkness sequel, and a seventh film that would merge the two storylines, came and went. Then, in 2019, a film called The Hole in the Ground, by relatively unknown Irish director, Lee Cronin, would make such a big impression on Sam Raimi that he would shelve these plans and ask Cronin to write and direct the next installment.
Evil Dead Rise Can Do Something That Other Franchise Movies Couldn’t
If The Hole in the Ground is anything to go on, Evil Dead Rise will be a more human sort of Evil Dead. A hit with critics, the A24 horror film explores the psychological pain of a mother who becomes convinced her son is an imposter after he wanders off into a sinkhole. It’s plenty scary, and the questions it raises about identity burrow under the skin, but at its heart lies a sadder, more relatable metaphor about a parent’s fear of change. As for what lies at the heart of Evil Dead Rise, though, The Hole in the Ground isn’t all there is to go on.
The plot of Evil Dead Rise has remained a closely guarded secret since its inception. While details are still scarce, a central premise involving a visiting aunt, “flesh-possessing demons”, and “the most nightmarish version of motherhood imaginable” suggests it won’t be another whacky romp. Like The Hole in the Ground, it’s likely Evil Dead Rise has learned from past mistakes and will have an emotional plot grounded in uncomfortable questions about identity and parenthood. Of course, it won’t be an Evil Dead movie without a little wackiness, or a lot of gore, but based on Cronin’s recent tweet about the “6,500 litres of blood” used during production, Evil Dead purists can rest assured it will be a worthy successor to the franchise.
