Evil Dead Rise Ending Explained: How the Reboot Sets Up Sequels and Spinoffs

Evil Dead Rise is now out in theaters, bringing fans of the series an entirely new reboot concept. The film does have a unique way that its ending plays out, one that sets up a whole new Evil Dead franchise to follow. 

This is not the kind of movie where you can miss the first five minutes – or else the ending will be wildly confusing. That’s because Evil Dead Rise opens with an entirely different set of characters in an entirely different location, and it’s only at the end that the true relevance becomes clear. 

(MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW!) 

Evil Dead Rise Ending Explained

The opening of Evil Dead Rise takes place at a lakeside cabin, where a girl named Teresa (Mirabai Pease) finds her friend Jessica becoming possessed by a Deadite. Deadite Jessica quickly rips Tersea’s entire scalp off, before chasing the terrified injured goal out to the dock, where the demon decapitates the guy with them, Caleb (Richard Crouchley), with his own drone. The opening sequence ends with Deadite Jessica rising from the lake like the anti-Christ hovering in the air. 

The actual bulk of Evil Dead Rise then goes back to the day before, where a family living in a rundown LA apartment discovers the Necronomicon hidden in an unearthed vault in the basement during an earthquake. Of course, the Book of the Dead unleashes Deadites in the building, and by the end of the film, only reluctant mother-to-be Beth (Lily Sullivan) and her niece Kassie (Nell Fisher) survive the attack, defeating a massive Deadite (made of the mashed-up bodies of their family) in a gnarly parking garage brawl. The hybrid Deadite gets fed into a wood chipper and is left in mushy pieces all over the ground. 

How Evil Dead Rise Sets Up A Whole New Franchise

While the Deadites are defeated, the demonic entity that possesses people isn’t left in some remote woodland setting: it’s sitting in the garage of a major urban living space. Beth and Kassie’s family lived on the top floor of the building, which was cut off from the floors below by the earthquake/Deadites. The rest o the building actually has no idea that the carnage on the top floor has unfolded, and goes about life as usual. The epilogue of the film goes full circle back to the beginning, as we see Jessica come strolling into the garage, contacting Teresa and pressuring her friend to come to the lake. Jessica is oblivious to all the blood and carnage around her at first – and before she knows it, the demonic entity possesses her, as well. 

The ending of Evil Dead Rise, taken together with the opening of the film, makes the big change that the Deadite possession is now akin to a virus that’s broken out into the open and is spreading fast. That means any number of film/TV projects can now run with that concept, which can result in more fun concepts for Deadite attacks, much like Evil Dead Rise had. 

Evil Dead Rise is now in theaters.