I guess I have to do this. I have to review 2023’s Evil Dead Rise from director Lee Cronin. I have no idea if this is a sequel to the 2013 Evil Dead or if this takes place in the original trilogy starring Bruce Campbell or if this is the start of a whole new Evil Dead Universe. I remember hearing that Lee Cronin had gone to Sam Raimi with an idea to set an Evil Dead movie in a high-rise apartment complex. I remember thinking at the time that it’s a great idea. This movie could be a modern take of what we saw in Lamberto Bava’s Demons 2. Instead we have an Evil Dead in an apartment complex, but the director treats it like another cabin in the woods.

Speaking of which, our movie begins in a lake house in the middle of the woods. A young woman named Jess is acting all freaky, speaking in voices that aren’t her own. It’s not long before she scalps her best friend with bare hands and murders her boyfriend. Confused? That’s okay. You’re meant to be.

Next it’s 24 hours earlier and we’re introduced to Beth, a guitar technician who just finished up a tour. Beth just recently discovered that she’s pregnant and decides to go visit her sister, Ellie, in LA for support. Unfortunately, Ellie’s husband recently left her and their three kids, Danny, Bridget, and Kassie, to fend for themselves. So Ellie is bitter over Beth not being for her in her hour of need. Blah, blah, blah.

While the kids are returning back with pizza for everybody, an earthquake hits LA. The parking lot at the bottom of the apartment complex cracks open. The kids are safe, but they drop the pizza. Danny notices a hole in the ground leading to a secret room and in the secret room are some vinyl records along with the Naturom Demonto, the book of the dead. Danny snatches them up and brings them back to the apartment where he plays the records. It seems that some rogue Catholic priests went against the demands of the church hierarchy and decided it would be a good idea to mess around with the book of the dead. Danny thinks it’s a good idea to let the record keep playing so the evil incantations can summon the ancient Sumerian demons. And then the power goes out in the building.

Meanwhile, Ellie was stuck in the elevator during the blackout and she gets attacked by various cables in a scene that reminds me of the trees attacking Linda in the original Evil Dead. Beth becomes our protagonist and has to deal with massacring her family as they become possessed one by one, but the action is mainly confined to Beth’s apartment which is essentially like the first floor of a cabin. The only other location featured heavily in this movie is the parking garage which serves as a stand in for the cabin basement. There really wasn’t an opportunity to take advantage of the setting with Beth fighting off the Evil Dead in other apartments or different floors of the building. Kind of a waste of a perfect location for a horror movie if you ask me. 

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443,episode 444, episode 450,episode 477, episode 491, episode 492,episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643,episode 644, episode 645, episode 670, episode 686, episode 687,  688, and 689) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.