Evil Dead Rise - 2023

 Evil Dead is a franchise every horror hound knows, whether they've seen all the entries or not.  To set the record straight, I have seen them all, including the original Evil Dead.

Evil Dead was basically a student project level amateur horror movie by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell, and they made it on a shoestring budget but with enough passion and blood and guts that it caught peoples attention in the long dead zombie genre.  It has an archetypical cabin in the woods approach where some friends raise a undead presence that has a horror comedy appeal, and it goes from there.

Some of the tenements of the series which entails The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, Evil Dead (2013), and now Evil Dead Rise are: lots of blood and guts, living dead, unseen monsters shot from a first person perspective, and horror comedy.  Also, the isolated cabin the the woods approach is common, though does not appear in Army of Darkness.

Evil Dead Rise is the most recent legasequel or reboot or whatever we're calling it now.  Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell are on as co-producers and in the beginning a lady at a cabin in the woods goes crazy and kills her friend and boyfriend.  Flashback (?) to an apartment complex where mom sends the kids out for pizza and an earthquake happens, and a chasm opens up into an old prison (?) where one of the kids find a vinyl record (?) with the incantations that when played bring forth evil dead.

Convoluted much?  Yeah, this is a plot of convenience if I've ever seen one.  Why not just have the book turn up from a mystery package or a fucking weirdo or whatever else you could do here...?  The evil dead infests the mom of the family and now its mom versus three kids and their aunt, her sister.  

Here's the thing guys, it's not scary.  I'm not even sure it's trying to be.  But it is entertaining, and it moves quickly, and makeup and the setting are pretty cool.  But also, there is no horror comedy, the apartment setting is not inherantly scary or interesting, and the gore is the only thing to keep you watching.  There's a few cool ideas, but really I don't know why this is necessarily "The Evil Dead" besides just to cash in on IP, there is nothing about this that really is reminiscent of the rest of the franchise.

I think it was in the end fine for what it was though, I will give it 2.5 stars.