evil dead rise [2023]

it's been a long while since i've seen a really fun, gooey roller coaster ride of a horror movie.  this flick, the fifth in the evil dead franchise, was written & directed by irish filmmaker lee cronin.  a pair of coworkers saw it at the theater after watching the very spooky trailer.  they reported back to me that the movie was okay but not so great as the trailer would leave you to think.  

so tonight,  i didn't expect much.  yet, cronin & his crew crafted a thoroughly entertaining revision & homage of the franchise as this movie steadicams its risen deadites into a blood red bacchanalia of terror.  lots of grue.  lots of the red stuff.  & an energy that threatens to give its viewers heart palpitations.  the fx is wonderful.  good old fashioned blood squibs at play here as well as physical features that are, in most movies today, made by CGI.  most likely CGI was used but from the first frame to its last it looks like, to this old horror fiend, it was good old-fashioned tom savini- style physical fx.

to say nothing of cronin's love & homage of the series.  there are a few set pieces that recall in loving detail the effects created by director sam raimi.  yet instead, we are treated to a new version of the deadites' call to chaos.  the plot is simple.  two estranged sisters, single mother of three kids, ellie, played by alyssa sutherland, & beth, played by lily sullivan, are reunited after beth, who is often on the road as a guitar tech, discovers she is pregnant.  ellie is a tattoo artist living in the Monde Apts. in LA.  her building was condemned & soon to be torn down.  the Monde is empty but for a few eccentrics.  the building is precisely what you would expect it to be: arrested decay.  most things, including the electricity, are spotty.  

after an earthquake, & hey this is CA where earthquakes are common, ellie's three kids return to the parking garage after going on a pizza run just as beth & ellie are getting reacquainted after a sizeable estrangement.  one of ellies kids, danny, finds a hole on the floor of the parking garage.  danny can't help but climb down inside the hole & poke around the ruins of what once was the vault of a bank.  that's where danny finds the Necronomicon, a volume of spells & images bound in human skin, as well as a couple of records from 1923.  danny thinks the book is valuable so takes it in the hope of giving the proceeds of the sale to his cash-strapped mother, & snatches the records because danny is also a DJ.  

guess what happens next.  fucking deadites are summoned & literally all hell breaks loose.  lily sullivan as beth makes for a very good final girl.  she finds the pluck to fight & save the youngest of ellie's daughters.  again, cronin is not beneath showing some very savage gore.  some of the set pieces made me squirm.  but i also loved how cronin made his movie & his love of my beloved genre is self-evident from the prologue which includes a scalping & a beheading, to a pair of scissors thrust into...well, see for yourself.  i think cronin stopped short of really making a nasty scary movie in the same spirit sam raimi did when he made the first evil dead movie in the early 1980s. think of young regan & her potty mouth in the exorcist [1973].  how shocking was that then & remains as shocking today.  cronin's script almost goes for those same heights but stops himself from going into some potentially problematic material.  should that be so?  let that question be answered by artists in their own way.  but one thing i love about the horror genre is how, historically, it shocks & disturbs our social being.  its fear generating to new ways of perceiving & thinking & doing.  

at any rate, it's been a long while since i've watched a new horror movie that scared & grossed me out.  even when i can see the conventions of horror being drawn , again, lee cronin created a movie that is fresh, red, & fun to see.  kudos to cronin & co.