Roses Have Thoughts

Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise is a vicious, apartment-bound reconfiguration of Sam Raimi’s splatter mythology. This film sees the franchise not as nostalgia but as a renewable resource of pure cinematic sadism. Relocated from the forest to a decaying Los Angeles high-rise, the film trades cabin-in-the-woods isolation for vertical claustrophobia. The result is a lean, feral horror machine that thrives on confinement, cruelty, and excess.

Michael Atkinson might call this a film that knows exactly how ugly it wants to be. Evil Dead Rise doesn’t flirt with restraint; it dives into Grand Guignol theatrics and savors every crack, rip, and arterial spray. Cronin stages his violence with a perversely elegant sense of rhythm. He turns domestic spaces like hallways, kitchens, and elevators into ritual chambers of pain. The film pulses with relentless confidence, never apologizing for its appetite.

At the center of the carnage is Alyssa Sutherland’s astonishing performance as Ellie, a mother transformed into a towering, sneering deadite queen. Sutherland doesn’t just chew the scenery; she dismembers it. Her physicality, voice work, and reptilian expressions create one of the franchise’s most memorable monsters. She is both monstrous and darkly comic. She channels the gleeful cruelty that made the original Evil Dead films cult classics, but with a sharper psychological edge. She turns maternal intimacy into something profoundly disturbing.

Lily Sullivan plays Beth, Ellie’s sister, with a bruised, lived-in weariness that grounds the film’s mayhem. Beth is not a hero in the traditional sense; she’s reactive, uncertain, and overwhelmed. Her eventual hardening feels earned rather than mythic. Morgan Davies adds emotional texture as Danny, the catalyst for the chaos. His curiosity feels tragically believable rather than foolish.

What distinguishes Evil Dead Rise from lesser franchise revivals is its commitment to texture and tone. The sound design is punishing. The score is a low-frequency throb that suggests the building itself is rotting from the inside. Cronin favors practical effects, giving the film a tactile nastiness that CGI can’t replicate. Flesh looks wet. Bones sound like they hurt. The movie wants you to feel every inch of its cruelty.

That said, the film’s single-minded devotion to escalation sometimes works against it. Character development outside the central family is thin. The narrative, once ignited, becomes a conveyor belt of torment rather than a story with peaks and valleys. There is little room to breathe. Some viewers may find the final act’s barrage of excess numbing rather than exhilarating.

Still, this is the point. Evil Dead Rise isn’t interested in prestige horror or elevated metaphor. It is a splatter symphony, a practical-effects showcase that honors the franchise’s roots. It proves the series can still mutate into something viciously contemporary. Cronin understands that Evil Dead works best when it is mean, funny, and a little unhinged. He delivers all three with sadistic flair.

In the end, Evil Dead Rise stands as one of the franchise’s strongest entries. It is brutal, inventive, and gloriously committed to horror as physical experience. It does not resurrect the series so much as let it claw its way back, dripping, screaming, and alive.

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