 Groovy or not groovy. That's the 20 buckets of blood question. Hey guys, this is my review for Evil Dead Rise. I've always enjoyed the absurdity and the ridiculousness of the Evil Dead films. The remake that was done recently was, while quite a bit on the nose with its subject matter and possibly dragged a little bit too long, was really well done. I still think that ending shot, that whole sequence, is just phenomenally well done. So going into this film I was excited, but I also was a little bit hesitant, mainly because the director has never done anything big. If you look at his filmography, he's done a lot of shorts, he's done a few episodes here and there, so the fact that this guy who hasn't done a lot got to write and direct his own, despite not having the most amount of horror experience, let's just say that kind of shows. The film follows this family that's in this dilavitated, about to be bulldozed building that their aunt comes by who is running into a few of her own personal issues, and then an earthquake happens. Now I understand that some people might be like, oh okay, you want to leave the building after the earthquake, but then you go back in, but no one leaves, despite the fact that there's a fucking giant hole in the parking lot, and then the stairs are gone. Guys, maybe this isn't entirely the most structurally sound building, but if you start going down that road with the Evil Dead movies, you will do that right up until the end of the movie. I do actually say that the beginning of the film is probably one of the better bits, aside from a really cool opening. As well to that, it also has its own connotation which I will bring up after I've done the review, because that would be a bit spoilery. The kid goes down to this hole that's in the ground that this building used to be a bank, and he goes into this really, really obviously you should not go inside this room, room, and he finds the Necronamicon, and a bunch of other things including some old record recordings. After that, obviously shit starts to go down, and I will say I do like how the shit goes down. I remember watching the Evil Dead remaking just going, why is this idiot reading this book? But this one, it's a little different. I actually liked how they brought it about, it was a little bit more of a okay, I kind of understand why. And then once shit goes down, the woman who plays the mom, Alyssa Sutherland, I actually had to admit, it took me a minute because I was like, I recognize you from somewhere. And you might recognize her? Y'all remember this? You remember when they made a fucking awful The Missed TV series? I knew what was recognizing her from something. She's really good, the aunt's really good, the young girl's really good. I actually even had to say all of the kid actors in this movie are pretty good considering the subject matter. Constantly impressed of how far they were able to push the boundaries with what they could do with the kid actors and the teenage actors. I was Lord. The gore, the horror, and the just maturity of the story went. But then this kind of brings me into my issues of the movie, and the concept of your mom being possessed by a demon and her dying and you basically have to try and fight against the urge to not want to run away from your mom to help her. I feel that's much better in concept than it is in execution because aside from maybe like one or two moments, that aspect of the film is not so much there. It's just kind of an amalgamation of events heading towards the ending to the point where it drags. This movie should not drag people. It is an hour and 37 minutes long. I fells every minute of the final half. And this is also unfortunately a victim of many horror movies, but a lot of the best shots, a lot of the best moments in the movie are revealed in the trailer. But even then with that aspect going on, the film is not as scary as it could have been. I will give props to the sound design, I will give props to the production design, the music's really good too. Some of the gore elements are good. Some not so much. I feel that some of them think that they're a lot more scary than they actually are. And then going back to the comment earlier where I was talking about the director not having a lot of horror experience, he kind of goes for a few tropes here. There's references to other much better horror movies. And he doesn't really make anything of his own with it. There's even a moment that is straight up slapstick that is during a terrifying scene and it is so jarring. It does kind of harken to the idea of the concept of Evil Dead's humor and horror mixture. It's just once, it happens once and it never happens again. I feel like my excitement for the movie just kind of drained as the film went on. Still felt like this wasn't as good of a horror film as I was expecting. Again, referring to the remake, yes it is on the nose, yes it's a bit pretentious. But at least it has sort of a meaning to it. It has some sort of ulterior method and motive and characterization. I think that maybe if this had gone through a second writer, maybe someone with more horror experience, having it looked over, kind of be like, okay, you have some good ideas here, but we can execute these elements better. Maybe the film might have been a little bit more enjoyable, at least for me. It's got some scares, but it's not so much. The gore is pretty good for the most part. The acting is pretty good for the most part, but I feel like it's just the story and the reason for wanting to watch this movie is the most lacking bit. I'll never watch this again. So in the end, I'm going to give Evil Dead Rise a 3 out of 7. Yeah, it's a little disappointing, but hey, we've already had a few surprises this year, which I thought were going to be crap, and they were okay. This movie's not crap, it's just underwhelming, I guess you would say. Speaking of which, this is the spoiler bit. For those of you who have seen the movie, you remember how awesome that title review is? Did it kind of hurt when that meant fucking nothing? Why even bother with that? That is entirely an element, okay, we have to do something with an homage shot of them going through the woods, kind of like how they did with the camera on the board thing from the first movie. And then we have this really cool title idea, but we have no reason why for it to happen. And then when you think about the movie's logic with how the film ends, for that to happen and then lead to what happens at the beginning of the movie is so fucking dumb and breaks the movie's own logic so poorly. This might be a little bit too soon, but I think that maybe you might have been referring to the opening of The Empty Man, which while that movie has some issues, it has a fantastically stellar opening in the same kind of vein as this one, but that was done supremely better than this movie's opening was. That meant something. This one unfortunately for Evil Dead Rise, the opening means absolutely nothing aside from a really cool text reveal. Anyways guys, that's all from me. What did you think of the movie? Let me know in the comments below, I'd like to see what you have to say. Did you enjoy it? Did you think it was scary or did you guys kind of find it a little bit underwhelming as well? Either way guys, I hope you enjoyed this review. If you did leave a like and if you're interested in more subscribe, until then, see you guys next time.