This Friday comes “Evil Dead Rise” to cinemas, the latest entry in the Sam Raimi-created horror franchise which slightly reinvents the formula with a whole new setting some new creative team members both in front and behind the camera.
Currently charting at a very strong 95% (7.4/10) on Rotten Tomatoes, the project sees “The Hole In The Ground” filmmaker Lee Cronin take over and writer and director with Raimi onboard as producer. Similarly Bruce Campbell won’t be reprising his Ash Williams role, but is also producing.
The new film arrives ten years after Fede Alvarez’s 2013 reboot, but don’t expect the wait for the next entry to be anywhere near that long. In interviews promoting the new movie, Campbell revealed that the producing team are now looking to expand the franchise beyond and have a roadmap in place.
He says the franchise will now center not around Ash but rather the three Books of the Dead seen in the films, indicating to The AV Club that “it’s all about the books now” and he and Raimi are essentially creating an anthology franchise offering diverse filmmaking styles:
“The only problem with that is that it can get out of hand and if we jump into that world too quickly, it’s hard to get it back. I think the stories will progress a little more now. We’re going to try and do them more like every two or three years rather than every ten years.
It’s also the first time Sam is working with his brother Ivan to create an overall Bible that will give future writers and directors an idea of where this thing should go next to potentially tie in some of these stories. So I think it’s going to get a little more tied in as the years go by. But because it’s all about the books. It could be a book in the past, a book in the future. It’s yet to be determined.”
In the newest film, a road-weary Beth pays an overdue visit to her older sister Ellie who is raising three kids on her own in a cramped Los Angeles apartment.
The sisters’ reunion is cut short by the discovery of a mysterious book deep in the bowels of Ellie’s building, giving rise to flesh-possessing demons and thrusting Beth into a primal battle for survival as she is faced with the most nightmarish version of motherhood imaginable.
Nell Fisher, Alyssa Sutherland, Lily Sullivan, Gabrielle Echols, Morgan Davies, Mia Challis, Jayden Daniels, Tai Wano, and Billy Reynolds-McCarthy co-star.
“Evil Dead Rise” opens in theaters on April 21st.
