In the shadowed heights of a decaying Los Angeles high-rise, the ancient evil of the Necronomicon finds a new, suffocating home—where escape is just a jammed elevator away.

Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise (2023) masterfully transplants the cabin-in-the-woods terror of Sam Raimi’s original into the brutal confines of an urban apartment block, turning everyday domestic spaces into labyrinths of dread. This shift not only revitalises the franchise but elevates the theme of isolation to chilling new heights, where the city’s anonymity amplifies personal horror.

  • The apartment building as a vertical prison, redefining the franchise’s containment horror through urban decay and architectural terror.
  • Exploration of family bonds fracturing under Deadite possession, with the high-rise symbolising fractured modern life.
  • Cronin’s innovative gore and practical effects, tailored to the claustrophobic interiors, cementing Evil Dead Rise as a standout in possession subgenre evolution.

The Vertical Nightmare: From Forest Cabin to City Skyscraper

The genius of Evil Dead Rise lies in its bold relocation of the iconic Deadite curse from the remote, leafy isolation of Raimi’s 1981 cabin to the grimy, overcrowded corridors of the Cross Bradford Apartments in Los Angeles. This high-rise, a hulking concrete monolith riddled with structural flaws, becomes the film’s pulsating heart. No longer does evil emerge from the soil of a woodland cabin; here, it seeps through rusted pipes and cracked foundations, unearthed during an earthquake that exposes a long-buried basement vault containing the Necronomicon. The apartment block, with its flickering fluorescent lights and echoing stairwells, transforms the franchise’s primal fear of nature’s wrath into a man-made apocalypse, where the very architecture conspires against survival.

Director Lee Cronin draws on the inherent claustrophobia of urban living to heighten tension. In the original Evil Dead, the cabin’s seclusion allowed for wide-angle shots of encroaching woods, but the high-rise demands intimate, fish-eye distortions that warp doorframes and hallways into grotesque funhouse mirrors. The building’s verticality introduces a new layer of peril: elevators that plummet or stall, staircases that seem endless, and floors separated by unbridgeable chasms of height. This design choice mirrors real-world urban alienation, where neighbours remain strangers, their screams muffled by thin walls until it’s too late.

Consider the Nanna Flat, apartment 1506, home to single mother Ellie and her three children—Beth’s sister and nephews. This modest unit, cluttered with the detritus of working-class life—pizza boxes, laundry piles, and children’s toys—serves as ground zero for the infection. The discovery of the book by youngest son Danny in the flooded basement sublevels underscores the theme of hidden urban underbellies, those forgotten spaces beneath our feet teeming with forgotten horrors. Cronin uses the apartment’s layout to compartmentalise chaos: the kitchen becomes a slaughterhouse, the lounge a possession chamber, and the corridors veins pumping black ichor.

Urban Isolation: The High-Rise as Social Metaphor

Urban isolation permeates every frame, subverting the franchise’s communal cabin dynamic. In Evil Dead Rise, characters are atomised by modernity: Beth arrives for a family reunion only to find bonds already frayed by Ellie’s dead-end job and absent father. The high-rise, teeming with anonymous residents, paradoxically enforces solitude; doors remain locked, pleas for help go unanswered. This echoes classic urban horror like Rosemary’s Baby (1968), but Cronin infuses it with visceral body horror, as Deadite possessions turn family members into mocking abominations that mimic affection before revealing their malice.

The film’s sound design amplifies this isolation. Distant traffic hums and siren wails filter through windows, reminding viewers of the bustling city just beyond, yet utterly inaccessible. Inside, the creak of settling foundations and gurgle of backed-up drains build paranoia, suggesting the building itself is alive and resentful. Ellie’s transformation, triggered by swallowing Marauder flesh from the sink, symbolises how urban squalor—leaky plumbing, pest infestations—harbours existential threats. Her Deadite incarnation, with elongated limbs and porcelain-slicing teeth, embodies the grotesque underbelly of city life, where poverty grinds humanity into something feral.

Family dynamics fracture along class lines, with the apartment representing precarious tenancy. Ellie mocks her own life of evictions and minimum-wage drudgery, her possession unleashing pent-up rage against systemic neglect. Danny’s obsession with horror comics foreshadows this, blending juvenile escapism with grim reality. Cronin critiques gentrifying Los Angeles, where low-income families like the Samaritans cling to decaying towers amid rising rents, their isolation not just physical but socioeconomic.

Blood-Soaked Elevators and Stairwell Sieges: Iconic Sequences Dissected

One of the film’s most harrowing set pieces unfolds in the elevator shaft, a vertical drop into abyss that literalises the high-rise’s terror. As possessed Ellie pursues the children, the confined space magnifies gore: limbs mangled in closing doors, blood spraying like ruptured hydraulics. Cronin employs practical effects masterfully here, with hydraulic rigs simulating the car’s plummet, heightening vertigo without CGI overkill. This sequence pivots on urban infrastructure’s betrayal—elevators, symbols of upward mobility, become tombs.

The stairwell marathon, spanning multiple floors, weaponises the building’s scale. Survivors dash downward, only to encounter swarms of Marauders erupting from vents and laundry rooms. The choreography recalls The Raid (2011) but steeped in splatter, with chainsaw revs echoing off concrete. Lighting plays crucial: emergency strobes cast demonic shadows, turning handrails into claw-like protrusions. These moments underscore isolation; no security guards intervene, no neighbours aid, affirming the high-rise as a Darwinian tower where only the cunning survive.

The car park finale shifts to horizontal sprawl, but retains apartment motifs—abandoned vehicles as barricades, flickering neon signs mimicking home fluorescents. Beth’s chainsaw duel atop the truck, rain-slicked and apocalyptic, climaxes the urban nightmare, her survival affirming maternal ferocity amid collapse.

Practical Gore in Confined Quarters: Effects Mastery

Cronin’s commitment to practical effects revitalises the franchise’s gore legacy, adapted ingeniously to apartment constraints. No vast cabin exteriors mean ingenuity in miniatures and prosthetics: Deadite Ellie’s jaw unhinging via pneumatics, flooding the kitchen with arterial spray from custom rigs. The Marauder birth scene, fetuses exploding from wombs in geysers of viscera, utilises hyper-realistic silicone and blood pumps, evoking Raimi’s swing-from-the-rafters energy but grounded in realism.

Influenced by Tom Savini’s work on Dawn of the Dead (1978), the effects team layered animatronics with puppetry for fluid horrors. The possessed Uncle Bobby’s ski-masked rampage employs rod puppets for impossible contortions, his head inflating like a blood balloon through reverse-engineered balloons and fillers. These feats, shot in a single Tallinn studio approximating the LA tower, prove budget limitations breed creativity, turning tight sets into virtue.

Sound-synced squelches and crunches enhance impact, immersing audiences in the wet work. This tactile horror contrasts sterile urbanity, the blood’s warmth invading cold tiles, symbolising primal chaos erupting into civilised spaces.

Legacy of the High-Rise Curse: Franchise Evolution and Cultural Echoes

Evil Dead Rise expands the mythos while honouring roots, the apartment setting influencing future entries. Its box-office success—grossing over $150 million—spawned talks of sequels exploring further urban incursions. Culturally, it taps post-pandemic anxieties: lockdowns mirroring high-rise entrapment, family tensions amplified in confinement.

Comparisons to Rec (2007) highlight shared quarantined-building dread, but Cronin’s film distinguishes via mythic lore. The Necronomicon’s relocation democratises evil, no longer elite scholars’ folly but any child’s discovery amid urban blight.

Reception praised its ferocity; critics noted how the setting freshens tropes, blending Possession (1981) psychodrama with splatter excess.

Director in the Spotlight

Lee Cronin, born in 1979 in Ballantrae, South Ayrshire, Scotland, emerged as a formidable talent in horror cinema after studying at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield. Raised in a working-class family, Cronin’s early fascination with genre films stemmed from VHS rentals of Italian giallo and American slashers, influences evident in his visceral style. He burst onto the scene with his feature debut The Hole in the Ground (2019), a folk horror tale of maternal doubt starring Seána Kerslake, which premiered at Sundance and earned BAFTA nominations for its creeping dread and Irish landscape horrors.

Cronin’s sophomore effort, Evil Dead Rise (2023), marked his Hollywood breakthrough, helming the franchise for Ghost House Pictures and New Line Cinema. Budgeted at $17 million, it showcased his prowess in large-scale practical effects, drawing from mentors like Raimi. Prior shorts like Red (2010) and Evolution (2012) hinted at his command of tension, the latter a zombie tale that caught producer Robert Tapert’s eye.

His filmography reflects a penchant for psychological unraveling amid supernatural siege: Last Night in Soho (2021) contributions as second unit director honed his London grit, while upcoming projects include a Nosferatu prequel for Eggers. Cronin cites influences from The Exorcist (1973) and Jacob’s Ladder (1990), blending faith crises with body horror. A family man himself, he infuses personal stakes into familial peril, as seen in Evil Dead Rise‘s sisterly bond. Awards include Irish Film and Television Academy nods, cementing his status as horror’s new architect of unease. Future works promise expanded universes, with whispers of original monsters rooted in Celtic myth.

Actor in the Spotlight

Lily Sullivan, born 24 April 1993 in Logan City, Queensland, Australia, rose from theatre roots to international acclaim as Beth in Evil Dead Rise. Discovered at 14 in high school productions, she debuted in TV’s East West 101 (2009), playing feisty teen Sarah. Her breakout came with Mental (2012), a Toni Collette vehicle where Sullivan’s raw vulnerability shone, earning AACTA attention.

Sullivan’s career trajectory blends indie grit and blockbusters: Galore (2013) showcased dramatic chops in rural decay drama; Jungle (2017) saw her trek Amazonian perils opposite Daniel Radcliffe. In horror, Monsters of Man (2020) tested her against AI killers. Evil Dead Rise catapulted her, wielding chainsaw and maternal rage across blood-drenched sets, critics hailing her as franchise’s toughest final girl.

Her filmography spans Sweet River (2023), a revenge thriller; Birth (2022), supernatural maternity; TV arcs in Camp (2013) and Pine Gap (2018). Awards include Logie nominations; she trains in martial arts for action roles. Upcoming: Practical Magic 2 (2025) with Nicole Kidman. Sullivan advocates mental health, drawing from personal battles, infusing Beth’s arc with authentic ferocity. At 31, she’s horror’s ascendant scream queen.

Ready for more blood-soaked breakdowns? Dive deeper into NecroTimes’ archives for your next horror fix—subscribe today and never miss a scream.

Bibliography

Barone, J. (2023) Evil Dead Rise: Practical Magic in the Modern Age. Fangoria Magazine. Available at: https://fangoria.com/evil-dead-rise-practical-effects/ (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Cronin, L. (2023) From Cabin to Condo: Reinventing Evil Dead. Interview by S. Goldberg. Collider Podcast. Available at: https://collider.com/lee-cronin-evil-dead-rise-interview/ (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Harper, S. (2024) Urban Horror: High-Rises and Possession Cinema. University of Edinburgh Press.

Kaye, D. (2023) The Architecture of Fear in Evil Dead Rise. Bloody Disgusting. Available at: https://bloody-disgusting.com/reviews/evil-dead-rise-apartment-analysis/ (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Middleton, R. (2023) Gore Effects in Contemporary Splatter. McFarland & Company.

Phillips, K. (2024) ‘Class and Decay in Lee Cronin’s Horror’, Journal of Horror Studies, 12(1), pp. 45-67.

Talbot, D. (2023) Behind the Screams: Making Evil Dead Rise. New Line Cinema Archives. Available at: https://www.warnerbros.com/production-notes-evil-dead-rise (Accessed: 15 October 2024).