Evil Dead is a strange peculiarity among horror franchises. Its second instalment is essentially a higher-budget remake of its first, the third a comedic time travel movie, and its fourth arguably gender-swapped second remake. There was a television spin-off for a few years, and now in 2023 there is finally a fifth film in the offing. It has been a decade since the last film. It has been 42 years since the original. It a hard series to predict, and with Evil Dead Rises emerging without director Sam Raimi or star Bruce Campbell, it is fair to question why this new film exists at all.

Thankfully writer/director Lee Cronin and a talented cast bring a lot of energy and talent to bear on Rise. Is it a necessary film? Absolutely not. Is it a well-made tribute to Raimi and Campbell’s widely-loved works? You bet: this is a violent, bloody, and unexpectedly amusing horror flick. One assumes Raimi – who acts as producer here – is proud.

Does a review of Evil Dead Rise need a basic synopsis? Probably not; just as 75 per cent of the previous films trapped a group of young people in a cabin in the woods and assailed them with demonic ‘deadites’, so Rise traps a family inside a condemned apartment building and does the same. The location gives the film a refreshing feel, and the familiar mixture of black humour, gory violence, and supernatural horror leaves it feeling like a warm blanket. Does Evil Dead Rise do anything particularly inventive or new? Probably not, but it does revisit the specific tone of the original films better than the last revamp. This is an enormously fun thing to watch.

It is true that Bruce Campbell’s continued absence leaves a hole in the middle of the movie, but there is an admirable attempt to fill that hole with new actors. They are uniformly effective in their roles, and ensure that each character has some modicum of depth. Given the confined and intimate nature of the film, it is good to see each has appealing traits to avoid feeling like fodder for the violence. Lily Sullivan and Alyssa Sutherland play sisters, with Morgan Davies and Nell Fisher playing Sutherland’s kids. They work well as a group, which gives the narrative solid support. A framing narrative involving an archetypal cabin by a lake does not work anywhere near as well; one suspects the film would have functioned better without it.

On its own merits, Rise is a rock-solid bloody horror. For fans of the franchise, it is tonally on point and marvellously satisfying. Listen carefully, and you might find it tied more closely to the previous films than you think.