You know me – I Iove Sam Raimi, I love THE EVIL DEAD. Nobody will ever make an EVIL DEAD the same as Raimi did, but as far as horror franchising goes I think he’s got a good set up here. We have his original classic trilogy (1981-1993), which he was able to legacy-sequelize surprisingly well with a decades later tv series (2015-2018). That’s gonna be it for Bruce Campbell’s character Ash, and I think that’s fine. More than enough. Instead Raimi has turned to recruiting younger up-and-coming filmmakers to put their spin on movies in the same universe. They have some sort of Book of the Dead that summons some sort of Deadites, but they aren’t necessarily serialized, they’re mostly different incidents that stand on their own.
It didn’t seem like a popular opinion at the time, but I loved Fede Álvarez’s vicious remake EVIL DEAD (2013), and that has only solidified over the years. Lee Cronin’s EVIL DEAD RISE (2023) didn’t hit me as hard, but it’s a fun time and it’s nice to see somebody capture some of the EVIL DEAD spirit (or even try to define what that is, exactly) while telling a different story in a different setting (an apartment building).
That one having done well, producers Raimi, Campbell and Rob Tapert got the ball rolling for some more, and I’m very impressed by their choice of the French director Sébastien Vaniček. Like them I loved his debut INFESTED (2023), which is about a black market shoe salesman and rare animal enthusiast who causes his housing project to be overrun by deadly fast-growing spiders. It’s both smarter and more serious than that probly sounds, and it’s on Shudder.
Vaniček has reteamed with his INFESTED co-writer Florent Bernard for this one, and according to Fangoria they were given complete freedom. There are a few connections to the last installment, and mentions of things that could be setting up some future storyline, but for the most part this feels like its own standalone story. And thankfully RISES burned all the obvious callbacks, so Vaniček can just get down to business. (read the rest of this shit…)
