Who’s been watching The Exorcist? Writer/director Lee Cronin has, and Evil Dead Rise, the fifth instalment in the Evil Dead franchise, is thick with references to William Friedkin’s seminal 1973 horror movie. No bad thing in itself and just for fun Cronin chucks in an amusing reference to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining at one point, just to keep things lively.
Comedy has been part of the mix in the Evil Dead series, going back to halfway through the second instalment when director Sam Raimi suddenly pushed the ick factor so far beyond overload that it became funny. It seemed unintentional, a misjudgement, at first. But going repeatedly too far proved Raimi meant it and he’s stuck at it ever since. He’s the producer on this film, the second of the series since it was rebooted ten years ago, and chose Cronin to direct based on Cronin’s script, which actually isn’t that funny. It’s Cronin’s visuals that deliver the humour, whether by direct visual quotation or by simply laying it on with a digger.
Plot? A family being terrorised by a spirit that’s been summoned back from the dead by mystical incantation – a leatherbound old book full of gnarly old pictures, a few 78rpm records containing a recording of a priest chanting something in Latin, the usual stuff. The family cannot get out of the apartment building they are in – the stairs have disappeared, the lift isn’t working – and so are stuck there to be menaced by a “deadite” which is taking possession of one person after another.
Cronin’s MO is to set up binary “who’s going to get it next?” oppositions. In the pre-credits scene a jockish lout flying a drone and a young woman reading Wuthering Heights. Who’s it going to be – horrible him or nice her? Then, later, there’s sensible mother Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and her rock-chick sister Beth (Lily Sullivan). Still later – and you can guess which way it went with Ellie and Beth here – it’s Beth, who turns out to be pregnant, and pre-pubescent Kassie (Nell Fisher) who are Cronin’s “who’s it to be?” pairing. Down the corridor on the same floor there’s young, hot Gabriel (Jayden Daniels) and old, practical Mr Fonda (Mark Mitchinson). Few of the actors come with much in the way of baggage so it genuinely is like watching the roulette ball bounce around till it’s found its destination. Oh, it’s her/him/them – Cronin keeps it moving.
Cronin has directed before, notably The Hole in the Ground (which I’ve not seen) and turns out to be good at this sort of thing. This movie has pace, it really moves, and it throws in its references to The Exorcist – growling voices, spiderwalks, camera angles, gothic lighting, the camera unsettlingly shifting from objective to subjective, vomit (lots of it) – like someone throwing together a recipe at speed and with a seeming disregard for getting the quantities right. So much blood.
The practical special effects and make-up work well together. The score and the soundtrack eventually merge into a cacophanous whole as the supernatural mayhem builds in intensity and the dark interiors and restricted colour palette mean that Cronin can do with suggestion what a needier director would do with all the lights on and with far less impact.
For all its plus qualities of technique it’s the sheer commitment that really lifts it, of Cronin, of his effects teams, of the actors – Sutherland, Sullivan and eventually Fisher all get moments of final-girl-ism and all rise to the challenge, though the plaudits have to go to Sutherland’s banzai performance once her character is possessed.
Funny? Repeatedly. Not everyone finds a person being impaled with a pole running from under the chin to out the top of the head amusing. Or a woman being fed feet first into a wood chipper particularly hilarious. It’s Cronin’s dedication to the ick factor, and the way he presents the latest abomination to his audience, that seals the deal. He’s like a cat that’s proudly brought in something dead from the garden. Give him a stroke.
Evil Dead Rise – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
