Not many horror franchises can keep the red stuff spurting without getting dusty and stale as a pile of bones, but Sam Raimi’s rollicking “Evil Dead” series has spent the last 42 years reanimating itself with persistent aplomb. (See: 1981’s seminal “Evil Dead,” 1987’s campier “Evil Dead II,” 1992’s horror-fantasy “Army of the Dead,” the grimly serious 2013 reboot and Starz’s giddily unserious “Ash vs. Evil Dead.”) Even in its scalp-ripping scream of an opener, the new “Evil Dead Rise” makes a cheeky feint toward the familiar, so you’d be forgiven for expecting more of the same from the fright franchise that’s inspired countless imitators.
A swift change of scenery, however, smartly trades the original’s cabin in the woods setting, now an overdone genre staple, for a new one: a decaying Los Angeles Art Deco apartment tower, where estranged sisters Beth (Lily Sullivan) and Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and Ellie’s three kids are about to have their lives upended by a certain gruesome grimoire. A fresh pivot that starts out strong before caving to fan service, this femme-centered installment at least doesn’t skimp on visceral horrors and black humor, finding inventive ways to make its audience cringe, cower and cackle as it puts its heroines through hell.
They’ve already got plenty to deal with, even before sinister forces come knocking at the door. Harried tattoo artist Ellie has been left high and dry by her deadbeat ex, and their crumbling building is set to be demolished. Beth, a rock chick roadie, has, alas, been saddled with the lazy screenwriter’s go-to plot device for female characters — an unplanned pregnancy! — and has finally come to ask her big sis for guidance. Everyone in this family is wrestling with their own baggage, while even the youngest daughter, Kassie (Nell Fisher) has resorted to impaling a doll’s head onto a stick she’s named “Staffanie” to keep herself company.
