Evil Dead Rise

johnny_ultimate

Normally wouldn't be one for just starting a thread for a trailer, but I'm particularly curious about this new Evil Dead film as it's directed by Ireland's own Lee Cronin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smTK_AeAPHs

Very early days (it's not out until 21st April), but the trailer at least suggests it's very much drawing from the well of the Raimi originals - intense close-ups, 'haunted' cameras speeding along the ground, black comedy, and a whole lot of absurd, nasty gore. But there's a lot of bad horror sequels out there, so let's see how this one turns out.

pixelburp

Uh, I'll be honest I didn't spot any "black comedy" in that but just really over-cranked gore. The Irish connection is nice n' all but that looked really bad TBH.

Only recently rewatched Evil Dead 2 and there's no way the viewer could miss its overt zany humour. It was, basically, a blood soaked Looney Toons film. While Army of Darkness leaned even further into the comedy with more gags and 3 Stooges inspired routines.

I don't see any of that lineage in that trailer; just a weirdly anachronistic tone like something made in the torture porn era of horror.

Fysh

This feels like a follow-up to the Fede Alvarez Evil Dead, which (aside from the last 10 mins or so) I found a fairly dull retread of the first film.

Having had 3 great seasons of Ash Vs Evil Dead which continued the balance of horror and comedy, I don't think I'm particularly fussed about a film that tries to just do Evil Dead as horror. That trailer also has an awful bang of Unsubtle Wanging On About The Importance Of Motherhood, which is generally a bad sign in American horror films IMO.

nix

Went to see this today, while it was grand and all, for an evil dead movie, i wasnt impressed at all. As a poster above mentioned with the zany humour, its completely missing from this movie and the CGI effects did nothing for me, and i was never freaked out at any point. And none of the jump scares got me, Maybe thats just my old well versed in horror ass being able to predict them but it just felt it was missing what made evil dead special. From hell felt alot more like an evil dead sequel to this, maybe thats whats missing, Raimi in control.. But yeah, overall watchable but fairly forgettable and i doubt it will ever be considered for a rewatch.

I cant honestly tell why its getting such high praise, hype most likely?

pixelburp

I've never heard of "Vudu", but this has already turned up on streaming. I thought Disney were bad for fast-tracking the MCU onto digital, but a mere month for this seems crazy. Especially as Wikipedia says this had a 15-20 mill budget, so at 115 worldwide box office it has hardly been a flop needed to be shoved online to recoup losses.

El Duda

Evil Dead Rise – 8.5/10

More than delivers. Hard to believe that they were going to release this direct to streaming. They made the right choice in giving it a wide release. 

I’m lucky to have a brand-new cinema in my hometown and f*ck me is it loud. I often find myself coming home from late night screenings and struggling to sleep as the cinema experience is so stimulating. This is my first time seeing anything as intensely horrific and relentless as this. There are certain scenes and moments they were so potent that it felt like they were burnt onto the inside of my retina. 

Despite staying up and watching a bit of Disney+ content to “cleanse my soul”, I found myself having (slight) nightmares for the first time in 10+ years. That’s the biggest compliment I could possibly pay this film. 

It does weaken slightly in the final act, and I found myself longing for some of that anarchic manic energy that Bruce Campbell brings in the originals. It does have a playful side, but it’s much closer in tone to the first Evil Dead.

6,500 litres of fake blood were used in the making of this. Bloody ‘ell does it pay off. Full on maniacal mayhem.

noahungry

In many ways, it's consistent with the previous Evil Dead movies, but I have to agree with what was mentioned - it lacks that characteristic humour we're used to. I do find it watchable though, which is more than I can say for many sequels out there. 

Agent Coulson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120578976#Comment_120578976

"Vudu" was Walmarts streaming service in the States for about a decade till they sold it to NBCUniversal through there Fandango streaming service, Warner Bros also owns part of Fandango.

The big companies own everything throught subsidiaes.

flasher0030

Very disappointed in this. I thought it might be something a little original, or as least scary.

It just had cliché after cliché in terms of content in horror movies - Endless amounts of fake blood. Evil people throwing up loads of Gouuhh, evil people warping their bodies into funny shapes (like The Exorcist one coming backwards down the stairs), possessed people creeping across the ceiling.

It was such a nothing movie. Feck all happened - just possessed people trying to kill (or repossess) humans. Over and over. Not a patch on Smile.

loyatemu

have the more recent ED movies been at all humorous? ED2 and Army of Darkness are basically Three Stooges movies with more blood.

faceman

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120689721#Comment_120689721

No. It's a cash in of the ED name.

Fysh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120689721#Comment_120689721

The 2013 remake was largely humourless (but that makes a certain amount of sense given the original). But the TV series was very much slapstick & gore a la ED2 & AoD.

pixelburp

The thing that distracted most in this, and it's not something that I'd normally notice or pick up on, were all the times the Aussie and Kiwi cast kept losing their very pronounced American accents. A whole bunch of times their Oceanic brogue pushed through.

loyatemu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120695870#Comment_120695870

the TV series had Bruce Campbell in it so it's effectively part of the original film series (I once again urge everyone to read Bruce's autobiography "If Chins Could Kill")

pixelburp

It's kinda odd to have a popular film series whose tones skew so wildly in opposite directions - while still containing the exact same iconography; what with all the dismemberment and blood.

Grim, straight faced torture-horror? Sure, go for it.

Live action Looney Toons with buckets of gore? Sure, go for it.

And neither camps seem especially hostile towards the other (even if I don't like the former's approach myself), though I think the goofy comedic version of the series has kinda won out as the more popular one? Which kinda links with what was my main problem with Rise: it felt like it was trying for both tones at the same time; both grim and nasty, while also that OTT tone where the deadites would ƒuck with their victims. But it never quite came together and on balance came off just mean-spirited in having a group of meat puppets messed with, without any sense of relief or ...hope, I suppose.

Looked good though: I'd be interested if Lee Cronin stepped back and tried something that wasn't horror, cos it was really handsome in places with lots of smart use of the limited geography through good composition and direction. I even spotted the use of a split diopter, which was a nice moment of film nerding.

Fysh

I ended up sticking this on as it had arrived on Netflix and... well, I wish I hadn't bothered. It's not even a terrible film - it's just a mediocre sequel that keeps on doing that stupid thing of reminding the viewer of superior previous films in the franchise by repeating lines, but makes it worse by occasionally doing something with enough flair that you think "why couldn't the whole film have been more like that?"

Really my issue with this was the writing - the core cast all felt like they are trying far too hard to be the Most Interesting Person In The Room, and as a result I did not find a single one of them plausible, which is not a great start in a film where the stakes are based on you caring about the characters and their survival. The Unsubtle Wanging On About The Importance Of Motherhood was present and as tedious as you might expect, although the Jury Prize for Worst Crime Against Writing in this regard goes to the line, uttered by a child, "You'll make a great mom some day. You know how to lie to children."

Beyond that, though - as @pixelburp says above, the relentlessly grim tone and Deadites being awful to their victims just kind of grated. Films like this, there are generally A Set Of Rules for the protagonists to save themselves, or at least save everyone else. The 2013 Evil Dead and this film both seem to have decided that a more nihilistic "nope, that's it, you're screwed" approach is better - and I can see how for a specific type of story that could work. But when your entire premise requires someone to repeatedly do something stupid, that grim "nobody's coming to save you" tone is a harder sell than if your story is about e.g. a religiously inspired serial killer or some such.

The pity of it is that there are some good moments in the direction that hint at a more interesting film - the opening shot is a neat gag, and while most of the opening scene is forgettable the actual title shot is very effective. Similarly, the sequence where one of the protagonists is watching what happens in the corridor through a security peephole is inventive and plays with what is happening out of frame. Unfortunately the good moments were too few and too short to offset the leaden tediousness of the rest of it.

Full_Circle_81

I'm so glad I didn't read any of this thread before watching this, because it would have put me right off.

I watched this over the weekend and thought it was great! Fair enough, it lacked the dark/zany humour of Bruce Campbell entries, but as a straight up horror flick, I felt it was extremely effective. I thought the production was impressive (effects and direction in particular) and the cast held it together well (kids thankfully weren't too grating). I loved how they managed to keep the feeling of claustrophobia, even though they moved it from a cabin to a big city apartment block.

I don't really buy the complaint of people doing stupid things to move the plot along, because that's every horror movie ever really.

Fans of the Bruce/Raimi movies will probably be disappointed (I actually prefer the fun tv show to the movies myself) but for horror fans there's a lot to like here.

Sugarlumps

Really good horror flick, action packed 90 minutes, no boring filler.