The Joy of Watching a Broken Family Get Slaughtered

Spoilers ahead.

Evil Dead Rise, directed by Lee Cronin, is the fifth entry in the Evil Dead franchise, and rather than relying on Bruce Campbell’s one liners and Sam Raimi’s whimsical filmmaking style, this new film relies on the entertainment value of watching a broken family get slaughtered.

Ellie is a single mother taking care of two teenagers, Danny and Bridget, and a little girl, Kassie, in a condemned Los Angeles high rise. The dad ran out on them and Ellie’s work as a tattoo artist isn’t cutting it. They have to be out of the building but they have no money and nowhere to go. Ellie’s sister Beth drops in unexpectedly from her life as a roadie to visit the family after ignoring their attempts to contact her for the previous year or so. Very fun setup for a rip-roaring Evil Dead romp. Now that we’ve been introduced to this miserable family, let’s watch them die one by one.

In a secret room underneath the high rise, Danny stumbles upon the Necronomicon - the “book of the dead” that unleashes the demons in this franchise - along with, conveniently, an old record containing a recording of a man reciting the incantation that summons the demons. Danny intends to sell the book to earn some money to help with the move, but his actions have disastrous consequences when he accidentally invokes the evil dead and his mother gets transformed into a deadite.

Ellie is the primary antagonist here, so most of the intended thrills revolve around a mother taunting and terrorizing her three children.

“What’s happening to me sweetheart?” Ellie asks Bridget.
“I don’t know, mom,” says Bridget.
“I know,” Ellie says. “I’m finally free of you titty sucking parasites.”
Ellie then jumps on top of Bridget and cuts her face with a tattoo needle. The cut later becomes infected and Bridget turns into a deadite herself. In Evil Dead 2, when Ash’s hand becomes infected, Ash cuts his hand off and battles with it. There is a whole slapstick comedy sequence containing Three Stooges references that is built around the infected hand. In Evil Dead Rise, when Bridget becomes infected, she goes into a room by herself and eats a wine glass. Bridget then attacks Kassie, and Kassie is forced to drive a broken broom handle through her older sister’s head. Later, Kassie witnesses her brother die from knife wounds to the chest while he coughs up blood and tells her, “I’m sorry.” Tons of fun.

There are moments where Ellie’s trying to call out for help from within her possessed body. Beth receives a phone call from Ellie saying, “Don’t let it take my babies!” Beth must rise to the responsibility of taking care of her sister’s kids. She may not have asked for this, but as we learn early on, she’s pregnant, so she must seize her role as a mom regardless. That isn’t the central conflict, however, because being a protector seems to come naturally for Beth. This film’s central conflict is the youngest daughter’s struggle to come to grips with the fact that her mom is never coming back. Talk about a satisfying character arc. I was like, “Yasssss queen,” at the end of the film when the little girl says, “You’re not my mother,” to the spider-like demon creature that her mother has turned into, constructed out of several combined corpses.

The movie delivers on the horror front. In the tradition of the earlier films, the effects are mostly practical and there’s lots of blood. I was never bored the first time I watched it.

In the first three Evil Dead movies, we are Ash as he battles the deadites across time. In Evil Dead Rise, we are Kassie, a ten year-old girl as she watches each member of her family get brutally slaughtered in a dingy apartment. I suppose you could argue that we’re supposed to be Beth, but Beth’s change comes naturally and without conflict. She doesn’t have to make any hard choices. She is simply trying to survive. Kassie is the character who changes, so I’d say she’s the one we are supposed to identify with. Once Kassie acknowledges that her mother is indeed dead, Beth is free to drive a chainsaw into Ellie’s head. Beth and Kassie hobble off together afterward to start a new family together. How satisfying.

If the film weren’t meant to be in good fun, it could pass as a critique of the gradual dissolution of the nuclear family in the United States. On my podcast I paired this film with Funny Games, another film about a family being decimated by pure evil. But Funny Games is not meant to be fun. It is meant to be a punishing experience for the viewer, and it is, and so it is artistically stronger than Evil Dead Rise, which doesn’t achieve what it sets out to do. It isn’t scary, just gross. Not suspenseful, just depressing.