Oooohhh yeah! I’ve been waiting for this one for a while! I couldn’t wait to finally get a chance to sit down and watch Evil Dead Rise. These days I don’t really hold my breath for sequels / reboots or whatever to be as good as the original, but part of me really did have my fingers crossed for this one at least.
The movie opened up strongly with a few teenagers at a “Crystal Lake” type camping spot with a cabin by the lake. One of them is infected with a zombie like virus and yes, it all starts again. This is at least gonna be decent if not awesome. Time to relax and watch the movie. Later it switches to a family in a big city apartment block. Mom has sent the kids out to get pizza and they return to the building carpark only to experience a medium level earthquake which opens up a hole in the lower level carpark. The brother decides to investigate and looks down into the whole which on the surface appears to be an old bank vault (from the bank that used to occupy the building) but finds an old tomb, with a lot of religious iconography above it. Perhaps used as a seal against what lies within? Yes, you guessed it, he finds the dreaded Necronomicon. of course the kid, opens the book and plays a recording accompanying it.
Im going to say the violence is less of the overall “Over the Top” feel of the original movies but has a darker more sinister feel than those original movies had. There’s some rather high impact violence, so i’ll also recommend this for the seasoned horror fans and not the faint of heart. For me personally I don’t want to get into a debate about which is better. The original is a legendary film, and this one very bravely takes a different direction. Which in this case worked out very well. This is really solid and engrossing film and all i can say is I dug it.
I feel like they’ve both put out a great film and continued the story line rather well. The film was written and directed by Lee Cronin (i’d not heard the name before) but both Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell were given executive director credits and with that, and with that I feel the legacy of the original was preserved rather well. There’s a few homages to the original films in this film but I won’t ruin the surprises there either, but look out for them 🙂
Over all this is excellent stuff, well written produced and chillingly unnerving! Fully recommend!
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