Evil Dead Rise has its fair share of scares, but that’s not where its true strength lies. The movie thrives best in delivering gore, ditching the comedy factor in favour of grotesque body horror, bloodthirsty flesh-possessing demons, and a lot of ripping, tearing, and pulling, uh, fleshy bits out.
But all of this effort will be for naught if the effect isn’t realistic enough. Fortunately for gore enthusiasts and fans of the cult horror series, film director Lee Cronin has put in a lot of care and attention in making everything look bloody good — in every sense of the word.
“We used 6,500 litres of blood on the movie,” he said. “That is real, sticky, cooked movie blood. We had to hire out this industrial kitchen to cook the blood and keep it fresh, be able to heat it up, because characters are covered in it. There was a lot of management of liquid in this movie. I wanted blood to be a character, so it was important we got the viscosity and look just right.”
Evil Dead Rise is the fifth installment of the franchise created by Sam Raimi, the mind behind the Spider-Man trilogy of the 2000s and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Focusing on Deadites — demons that inhabit bodies — that are summoned by reading from the Book of the Dead, the series spawned two direct sequels, a spinoff series, a 2013 reboot, video games, and comic books.
Instead of Bruce Campbell, the leading man of the first two Evil Dead movies, Cronin’s most recent outing follows a mother, Ellie (played by Alyssa Sutherland), her sister (Lily Sullivan), and her three children against the backdrop of a tiny Los Angeles apartment. Despite the narrative differences, there was a key piece of advice from Raimi that the director took to heart.
“Sam is a really good, simple communicator,” shared Cronin. “His advice: Make sure the Deadites are really scary and use the book. My answer was ‘Of course.’ It’s an interesting insight into Sam and his trust when he hires a filmmaker. He wasn’t making the assumption that I’d do those things; he just wanted me to tell my story my way.”
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
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