EVIL DEAD RISE (2023) *

I guess it makes me an old fuddy duddy to say this, but here it goes.  Children, especially small children, have no place in an Evil Dead movie.  It’s one thing to abuse, beat, torment, vomit on, stab, and dismember Bruce Campbell.  It’s another thing when it happens to little kids.  

What makes it even worse is that it’s their own mother who torments them.  When her son plays a record containing transcripts from The Book of the Dead, it unleashes an evil spirit in their ramshackle apartment building.  The spirit soon possesses his mother, turning her into a cackling, depraved, demented Deadite.  Before long, she attacks her children and tries to make the evil spirits possess them too.  It’s then up to her no-good sister to protect the children and send the evil packing.

The pre-release buzz made a big deal that the filmmakers were taking Evil Dead out of the cabin and into an apartment building.  (The “Rise” of the title refers to not only the Evil Dead rising, but the location, a high-rise apartment.)  I guess it might’ve worked if the movie went into full-on Demons 2 mode, but most of the action takes place in a single apartment, with some occasional side trips to a hallway, a stairwell, the elevator, and the parking garage.  Heck, writer/director Lee Cronin makes such little use of the new surroundings that it makes you wonder why it just couldn’t have taken place at the cabin again.  I mean the wraparound scenes, which happen at a cabin in the woods, are the only sequences worth a damn in the entire thing, and only serve to remind you why it works best in that setting in the first place.  

Hell, it pains me to say this, but the gore isn’t even all that good.  We get a scalping and a scissors up the nose, but that is about it.  The much-ballyhooed cheese grater scene is a big bust.  Most of the pain is inflicted on the kids, which is just unpleasant.  If you want to see young teens eating glass and being butchered, then have at it.

It doesn’t help that none of the characters are compelling in the least.  Plus, all the callbacks to the previous movies fall flat on their face and are downright cringe-inducing.  Every.  Single.  One.  There are even moments that crib from The Shining, The Thing, and… uh… Fargo.  

The only touch I did like was that in addition to blood and bile, the possessed Deadites have now added jizz to the liquids they are prone to projectile-vomit.  One broad spewed so much seed you’ll swear she just got finished with a fifty-man bukkake session.  That’s not a ringing endorsement to be sure, but in a movie as massively disappointing as this, you’ve got to take what you can get.