Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Plot of Evil Dead Rise: Beth is visiting Ellie her sister who lives with her three children teenagers Danny and Bridget and child Kassie, in a condemned apartment block in LA. Beth is newly pregnant. The young people are down in the underground car parking when there is an earthquake causing rifts in the floor and making a hole. Danny goes down into the space revealed and discovers a chest containing a book, and some 78 records which he takes back to the apartment. The book, after some resistance opens to reveal demonic pictures and the records when played reveal attempts at exorcism. But what is happening in the apartment is affecting the local environment, and Ellie when she returns from shopping is attacked and invaded by a presence. Back in the apartment it is evident that Ellie has been transformed into a demonic person intent on doing harm to those around her. What to do?

Content: No sex or nudity or drinking or drug taking. There is an opening scene in the country where a woman is possessed and harms those around her. All else is a flashback. Once Ellie, the mother, has been possessed things go downhill, with the offspring and the formerly estranged sister under attack. Down in the car parking area is a van, one of those things for mulching up vegetation and a chainsaw. They come into play later. It becomes evident that no matter what happens to the bodies of those transformed, even though physical damage may be done, they cannot be permanently incapacitated. This resulted in some extremely gruesome presentations. Bridget the teenage daughter, when transformed, is stabbed through the head with a sharpened stick but pulls it out. Ellie is shot with a twelve bore and stabbed in the head with scissors, one of the neighbours has an eye bitten out. When Ellie plays the record it says they cannot be destroyed, all you can do is run.

A View: I admit to not having seen any of the previous films of the franchise, I just never came across them. If I had I might have been prepared for the gruesome presentation which involved lots of stabbing, cutting and bloodshed. In the end I felt quite sorry for the surviving actors who were quite unrecognisable due to being covered in blood. But the film has been quite well thought of and has made money, so in summary, one for the fans.

Fun Fact: The director has said that 4,700 litres of fake blood were used in the production.