Evil Dead Rise Scores Praise From Stephen King

By Patrick Cavanaugh

In the weeks since Evil Dead Rise had its world premiere, the latest sequel in the long-running franchise has been earning praise from critics, but the latest significant figure to share love for the project is author Stephen King. His reaction focuses more on the upsetting imagery the film includes, and given that the experience unfolds in a tall apartment building, King picked up on how at least one sequence pays homage to the blood-spilling elevator from his The Shining. While we're only a few months into 2023, Evil Dead Rise has earned some of the best reviews for a horror film this year. Evil Dead Rise lands in theaters on April 21st.

"While I'm busy promoting, how about Evil Dead Rise?" King shared on Twitter. "It's gruesome, it's bloody, it's even got an elevator vomiting blood. Not to mention chainsaw-fu."

In the fifth Evil Dead 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 L.A. 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.

Part of what makes King praising the new film so special is longtime fans of the franchise know how King was an integral component of the original film finding its audiences.

An independent production by all definitions, from its budget to members of the cast and crew pulling double and triple duty in their roles on the project, director Sam Raimi proved with The Evil Dead that an intriguing story and unconventional filmmaking methods proved superior to what could be accomplished by a major studio, though Raimi and his team struggled to find a distributor. Luckily, King himself wrote a piece on the film for the Twilight Zone magazine praising the project.

In that piece, King noted that, "What Raimi achieves in Evil Dead is a black rainbow of horror ... The camera has the kind of nightmarish fluidity that we associate with the early John Carpenter; it dips and slides and then zooms in so fast you want to plaster your hands over your eyes. The film begins and ends with crazy exhilarating shots that make you want to leap up, cheering."

In addition to this piece helping the film score distribution, it also allowed Raimi to make a follow-up film with a larger budget, with the opening 20 minutes of Evil Dead 2 being utilized by Raimi to recreate the entirety of the original The Evil Dead to make for a more complete story for newcomers.

Evil Dead Rise lands in theaters on April 21st.

Are you looking forward to the new movie? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

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