Two and a half stars out of four.
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So I like this movie. I thought it was decent. I definitely felt it was a huge improvement over the 2013 remake. And yes, the 2013 movie is a remake, despite what numerous fans claim.
Back in 2013, I went to see that version of EVIL DEAD to review it for this blog. At that time, I gave it a two-star rating, mainly because of the semi-competent acting and the cinematography/effects. However, in the decade-plus years since then, I no longer account for this if the movie is any type of a studio release. Because of the advances in technology and the availability of talented unknown actors, most movies possess these qualities mentioned. Unless you're making an ultra-low budget show on a Walmart brand digital camcorder and uploading the movie to YouTube, acting and production value are going to be higher than they've been in the past, even with most indie flicks. So at some point, I need to revisit EVIL DEAD (2013) to see how my perspective has changed.
I started writing this review back in April of 2023. It took me a while to return and finish it. This was largely due to the fact that it seemed to be division among the fans over this movie. It was draining enough that after researching, I had a hard time trying to write anything for the review. But I now I feel the time is right. I mean, a year later is a great time to talk about a movie, right?
RISE does a couple of things that piss me off, I want to get that out of the way here. When the trailer was released, the trailer made it look like it was set in a weird, fairy tale-esque house. It looked again to be another rural location, which has been germane to this series. However, the exteriors shown in the trailer are only in the first 5-10 minutes. As fate would have it, the beginning takes place a day after the main events of the movie. There's plenty of gore and payoff during this, but you have to sit through to the last four or five minutes to understand how the main plot ties into the beginning. And it's absolutely fucking unnecessary. It's a total bait and switch movie. That may be why I knocked half a star off the rating.
Then there are the characters. The protagonist is Beth, a guitar technician for an unnamed band who is also pregnant. She decides to visit her sister and her family in their Los Angeles shithole apartment: Ellie, a so-called tattoo artist who is raising her family alone after her husband left (after watching this movie, inferences can be made as to why he left); Bridget, an androgynous teen activist who's concerned with finding her Eat The Rich shirt; Danny, the younger brother who is aspiring to be a DJ (and who kick starts the mayhem in this movie); and Kassie, the token precocious child of the picture who mutilates dolls. Then there's the two ancillary characters in this setting. Mr. Fonda, the gun toting dickhead slumlord and Gabriel, who I think is a tenant? Not clear on that. In any event, you find yourself immediately rooting for the deaths of everyone involved. And fortunately for the viewer, that's mostly what happens!
While Beth and Ellie are moping around, they send the kids out for pizza. On the way back, the children find themselves caught during a small earthquake in the parking garage of their building. A crack in the floor reveals a passageway to a bank vault that somehow was built-over by the apartments? In his infinite wisdom, Danny climbs down into the chamber. He discovers this movie's version of the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis and three records made by preachers toying with the book. Danny decides these albums would be great to sample for his DJing efforts and plays the incantations back in the apartment. I'm not sure how. These records, from the 1920s, would likely be 78 RPM and most modern record players only do 45 and 33. But that's nitpicking and I choose to let that go.
From there on, we go full deadite, starting with Ellie. Her possession is the best in the movie and is genuinely frightening. From this point on, it's what Joe Bob Briggs used to refer to as spam in a cabin. The atmosphere has a great vibe of claustrophobia due to the characters being stuck on the second floor of this complex. Gore and body-count
are abound.
Like I've said about many other movies, this should've been a stand alone flick. It didn't need to be a part of the Evil Dead series and would've benefited from not having the constraints of that series. That said, this movie is well worth a couple of watches.
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