Evil Dead Rise 2023 Movie Review
Director: Lee Cronin
Cast: Lily Sullivan and Alyssa Sutherland
Music: Stephen McKeon
Cinematography: Dave Garbett
Editing: Bryan Shaw
Synopsis:
A reunion between two estranged sisters gets cut short by the rise of flesh-possessing demons, thrusting them into a primal battle for survival as they face the most nightmarish version of family imaginable.
Evil Dead Rise 2023 Movie Review:
I went into this Evil Dead film with low expectations especially after being disappointed by other recent horror movie sequels like Halloween Ends, Scream VI, and Hellraiser (2022). My expectations were not low enough though as I was thoroughly disappointed by this movie.
This new addition to the Evil Dead universe is easily the franchise’s most tame and least frightening. The original Evil Dead trilogy starring (Bruce Campbell) was the perfect mix of horror, dark humor, excessive levels of gore, and a likable lead character who tied it all together with the help of his chainsaw and boomstick.
Even the (2013) Evil Dead reboot movie had some fun and interesting ideas which while not anything particularly groundbreaking still gave fans a ton of gory kills and passable enough characters that don’t leave you with a headache between their deaths.
Evil Dead Rise fails to bring anything original or even of any value to the Evil Dead franchise. The main cast of characters is mostly teenagers who are written as mere plot devices to move the story forward.
A good example of this is one of the particular characters who wants to become a DJ so he has a record-mixing turntable set up in his room. This is the characters defining characteristic which exists so he has an excuse to play a record of a priest reading a passage from the Book of the Dead raising the deadites.
That’s all the character development there is for this character until he dies. The other main characters have very little backstory or defining characteristics other than they are all related to each other.
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The deadlines in this Evil Dead movie are tame in comparison to the previous Evil Dead movies and TV series. The lead deadite shown in all the trailers for the movie is the mother of the child characters in the movie and we watch as she becomes possessed and hunts her family down to turn them into deadites as well.
Unfortunately, however, the lead deadite spends most of its time on screen screaming incoherently, falling over, or saying cheesy one-liners. When the killing does begin some moments are fun and gory such as a deadite eating a guy’s eyeball out of his eyesocket only for it to be followed by something as stupid as her spitting the eyeball out.
It just so happens to land in the mouth of another character choking him to death in a shot that looks less Evil Dead and more Tales from the Crypt. This was an attempt to copy a similar scene from Evil Dead 2 only without the dark comedy that made the scene work in the first place.
The special effects range from practical products mixed with CGI that looks surprisingly well done if not entirely original in design to a CGI mess that looks so unrealistic and fake it takes you right out of a scene that’s supposed to hook you in with its suspense.
The absolute worst thing about this movie, however, is that it takes place in a run-down apartment building filled with other tenants but
only the people on the top floor of the apartment building are attacked by the deadites or are even aware of the chaos that goes on in the building over just one night.
In the span of a few hours, the building is affected by a significant earthquake that cracks a hole in the building’s foundations, and the elevator gets filled with blood and destroyed flooding the elevator shaft and the ground floor with mass amounts of blood.
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The stairs in the building are destroyed, and there are screams and even gunshots in the building at least ten people die and through all of that the other people in the building just simply don’t let it interrupt their fine evening at home.
This might seem like an odd thing to point out but the movie even shows a character who lives in the building in the morning after the massacre saying they had trouble sleeping due to a thunderstorm that night nothing else just the thunder, not the mass murder or anything.
Despite what the trailer suggests, the movie ultimately fails to deliver on its promise of extreme gore and blood-curdling violence. While
it does contain some moments of bloodshed, they pale in comparison to the 2013 reboot, which featured much more graphic and disturbing elements, with everything from people slicing their cheeks open to severing their arms off with an electric meat cleaver.
So, while the reboot from 2013 met my expectations in this regard, the latest installment seemed to pull its punches, leaving me wanting more. The violence felt sanitized and unimaginative, failing to evoke the sense of shock and disgust that I was hoping for.
The film also lacked a sense of urgency and tension, leaving me bored and impatient throughout. The film almost feels like it is afraid to shock its audience – people get stabbed, tattooed, and stabbed again, and none of it is particularly exciting or different from anything you have seen before.
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I don’t recommend paying to watch this movie in cinemas it isn’t worth the price of a ticket to watch a movie that is only worthy of being on a streaming service like Hulu or Shudder at best. The movie insults Evil Dead fans by simply doing just the bare minimum necessary for it to qualify as an Evil Dead movie.
Verdict: Evil Dead Rise 2023 Movie Review
Evil Dead Rise” falls short on both the violence and the tension. The slow pacing and lackluster action scenes leave viewers feeling bored and unsatisfied. The lack of a satisfying payoff, combined with the toned-down approach to violence and gore make the movie a disappointment
Note:
The reviews for Evil Dead Rise say things like “Overwhelmingly Scary” and “The Best Evil Dead since the original” Whoever wrote these reviews has either been paid to praise this movie or they have never seen a horror movie in their entire life and are the kind of people who would get scared watching a Paranormal Activity movie.
