Evil Dead Rise (2023)

A mean, apartment-bound possession blitz that turns motherhood into the sharpest blade in the room.

Release Date: April 21, 2023 (U.S. theatrical)
Runtime: 96 minutes
Rating: R (strong bloody horror violence and gore, and some language)

Rotten Tomatoes: Critics 85% • Audience 76%
Metacritic: Critics 69 • User 6.9
Letterboxd: 3.1 / 5
EncoreCraft Score: 64 / 100
Where to Watch: View current streaming availability on JustWatch

EncoreCraft Breakdown (0–10)

• Rewatch Value: 7 / 10
• Scare Factor: 8 / 10
• Performances: 7 / 10
• Violence and Disturbance: 9 / 10
• Pacing: 8 / 10

Synopsis

Beth arrives at her sister Ellie’s apartment already wound tight, dragging the weight of unfinished conversations and a life that never quite settled into place. The high-rise feels exhausted, its narrow hallways buzzing with distant voices, flickering lights, and the constant sense that too many lives are stacked too close together. Ellie is holding things together through routine more than stability, juggling three kids and a crumbling domestic calm that feels fragile even before anything goes wrong. The air hums with a low, urban pressure that never quite lets up.

When Ellie’s son uncovers a sealed book and a stack of ancient vinyl recordings hidden beneath the building, curiosity cuts through that fragile calm like a blade. The recordings crackle with age and authority, a priest’s voice echoing through cheap speakers as if the walls themselves are listening. Once played, something invasive slips into the apartment and begins testing the space, learning voices, rhythms, and weaknesses. What follows is a single night where exits vanish, family roles twist under pressure, and the apartment meant to shelter them becomes a mechanism for survival horror.

Spoiler-Free Review

Domestic noise sets the tone before the horror ever announces itself. Kids argue down the hall, cabinets slam, and neighbors thump through the walls with casual indifference. Those everyday sounds ground the film in something recognizable, which makes the later ruptures feel sharper and more personal. By choosing an apartment building instead of a remote location, the story traps its characters in a place that should offer safety but instead becomes a cage with too many doors and not enough exits.

The direction leans heavily on spatial tension rather than spectacle at first. Cameras slide through vents, linger on doorframes, and drift down hallways as if the building itself is testing where it can apply pressure. Silence stretches just long enough for you to register distant footsteps or a faint scrape before something interrupts it. When the violence arrives, it feels like an escalation of that pressure rather than a sudden shift in tone. The space never relaxes, and neither does the audience.

Performances anchor the chaos once things begin to unravel. Beth’s reactions feel lived-in, showing panic through restless movement and darting glances instead of big emotional declarations. Ellie’s presence, even before possession fully takes hold, carries a wrongness in posture and timing that makes ordinary interactions feel unsafe. The children’s fear is staged at close range, often at eye level, which keeps the horror grounded in physical vulnerability rather than abstract threat.

The gore lands because it is intimate and awkward, staged like injuries that happen too fast and too close. Household objects become weapons not through cleverness, but through desperation, and the film lingers on textures and sounds that make the damage feel irreversible. Excess is part of the franchise’s DNA, but here it is framed through confinement and proximity. An EncoreCraft Score of 64 reflects a film that prioritizes relentless tension and visceral payoff, even when it sacrifices quieter character beats to keep the pressure unbroken.

Craft Notes & Background (Non-Spoiler)

• Writer-director Lee Cronin conceived the film as a new Evil Dead story set largely within a city apartment building rather than the traditional cabin setting.
• The film stars Lily Sullivan as Beth and Alyssa Sutherland as Ellie, with Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, and Nell Fisher in key supporting roles.
• It is the fifth film in the Evil Dead franchise and was released by Warner Bros. Pictures.
• The film had its world premiere at South by Southwest (SXSW) on March 15, 2023.
• Principal photography took place in New Zealand from June through October 2021.
• The project was initially planned as a streaming release before being upgraded to a theatrical rollout after strong test screenings.
• Cinematography is credited to Dave Garbett, with editing by Bryan Shaw.
• The score was composed by Stephen McKeon.

⚠️ ⚠️ SPOILERS BELOW ⚠️ ⚠️

The rest of this review discusses the full plot and ending.

⚠️ ⚠️ SPOILERS BELOW ⚠️ ⚠️

Full Plot Recap (Spoilers)

A violent prologue at a lakeside cabin opens the film with abrupt cruelty, ending in bloodshed that offers no explanation or relief. The story then rewinds to Los Angeles, where Beth learns she is pregnant under harsh fluorescent lighting and reacts with stunned silence rather than joy. She travels to see her sister Ellie, carrying the news like unfinished business she is not ready to speak aloud. Ellie’s apartment is already strained, filled with cracked walls, restless children, and the low hum of a building that feels neglected. Instability hangs in the air long before anything supernatural arrives.

An earthquake exposes a sealed chamber beneath the building, and Ellie’s son Danny discovers a strange book alongside religious artifacts and three vinyl recordings dated to 1923. The records, played out of curiosity and greed, feature a priest calmly explaining the book before demonstrating exactly how to summon what should have remained buried. The incantation locks the building down, disabling exits and isolating the residents. Ellie becomes possessed shortly after, returning to the apartment with a voice that sounds right but lands wrong, her presence immediately predatory.

From there, the night collapses into a brutal siege. Neighbors are lured close by familiar voices and attacked in hallways that echo with screams cut short by walls. Inside the apartment, Ellie weaponizes motherhood, speaking softly, waiting for hesitation, and striking when trust opens a gap. Attempts to restrain or reason with her fail, and one by one the family members are injured, possessed, or killed. Danny’s death marks the point where survival overtakes any hope of rescue or reversal.

The final recording reveals the truth too late: possession can only be stopped by destroying the host body completely. As bodies pile up, the threat becomes physical mass, culminating in the grotesque fusion of Ellie, Danny, Bridget, and other remains into a multi-limbed creature known as the Marauder. Beth and Kassie face it in an elevator flooding with blood before escaping to the parking garage. There, Beth forces the creature into a wood chipper, ending the threat through exhausted resolve rather than triumph. The film closes by returning to the opening thread, showing the evil continuing elsewhere, confirming that survival did not mean containment.

Spoiler Analysis

Fear in Evil Dead Rise operates as erosion rather than transformation. Characters do not rise to the occasion so much as shed parts of themselves under pressure. Decisions become faster and harsher, driven by the sound of something pounding on a door or a voice calling from the wrong side of a wall. Compassion turns into liability, and hesitation is repeatedly punished with immediate, physical consequence. Survival emerges not through heroism, but through the willingness to abandon ideals that no longer fit the situation.

Formally, the film scares through patience and spatial denial. Cronin relies on tight framing, restricted sightlines, and delayed movement to keep the audience off balance. Sounds arrive before sources, and familiar voices are detached from safe bodies, creating constant mistrust of what is heard. Possession is framed less as spectacle and more as behavior, marked by timing, posture, and restraint. The horror sinks in because it studies the characters before striking, mirroring how the audience scans the frame for danger.

The ending reframes the entire story as contamination rather than closure. Evil is not destroyed so much as redirected, slipping out of one space and into another through curiosity and proximity. Beth and Kassie leaving together suggests a fragile new family, but it is one shaped by loss and moral compromise rather than healing. The final echo back to the opening implies a loop that will continue repeating, indifferent to lessons learned. What remains is not comfort, but endurance, and the unsettling idea that endurance may be the best outcome available.

Hidden Craft & Story Secrets (Spoilers)

• The film names the combined, multi-limbed creature formed from possessed bodies “the Marauder,” emphasizing the series’ love of grotesque physical escalation.
• Bruce Campbell appears in an uncredited, voice-only cameo on one of the 1923 recordings.