“This is about a family in a rundown building stuck in their apartment,” Lee Cronin says of the film, which follows sisters Beth (Lily Sullivan) and Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and Ellie’s three kids. “It follows the same rhythm but puts it in a more contemporary space.” The filmmaker, who previously directed the ominous Irish horror film “The Hole in the Ground,” says he was “always pretty comfortable making that move” to Los Angeles, thanks in part to other classic “‘Evil Dead’ elements that the movie still does include. “There’s no Ash in this story and there’s no cabin in the woods, and they’re two iconic elements of what ‘Evil Dead’ is,” he says, “But the movie does include the book and an extraordinary amount of vicious, malevolent Deadites.”
It also includes some grotesque, buzzed-about moments, like when a Deadite takes a cheese grater to Beth’s leg, and when two girls who are in a cabin-like rural setting end up in a truly messed-up-looking situation that leaves one of them without a scalp. Sam Raimi fans won’t know whether or not “Evil Dead Rise” lives up to our expectations until it’s released this spring but based on the trailer alone, Lee’s totally right: there’s plenty of horrors to be found in a cramped apartment.
“Evil Dead Rise” hits theaters on April 21, 2023.