Yahoo Movies How does Evil Dead Rise connect to the other Evil Dead movies?
Spoilers for Evil Dead Rise follow.
Did you spot all the connections between Evil Dead Rise (now available on Netflix UK) and the Evil Dead franchise?
Director Lee Cronin's movie has expanded the horror saga with one the 2023's best horror movies, and here is how it connects to Sam Raimi's original 1981 The Evil Dead.
Is it a sequel, reboot, standalone movie or even a requel (a reboot that's also a sequel, like Evil Dead II)?
While Evil Dead Rise is set in a new location – an almost derelict Los Angeles apartment building – away from the familiar cabin in the woods of the first two movies and 2013 reboot/sequel Evil Dead –, and features a cast of new characters, there are still lots of moments, and a very toothy book, that connect it to the original films.
Here's what to look out for.
The Necronomicon
The biggest link to the previous Evil Dead movies is the Book of the Dead itself, the Necronomicon.
This is the flesh-covered book that is discovered by archaeologist Raymond Knowby before the events of The Evil Dead. He has read out and recorded the incantations from the tome, and it is those recordings that Bruce Campbell's Ash and his friends play back, unleashing a demonic being.
In the first movie, it is referred to as Naturom Demonto, but by 1987's Evil Dead II – which is a sort of remake/sequel to The Evil Dead, as Ash is at the cabin for the first time (again) – the book is called the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, and we learn it was discovered by Knowby at an archaeological dig.
By the end of Evil Dead II, Knowby's daughter Annie has read from the book to put a stop to the demons. But instead, her recitation of the pages opens a swirling portal that sucks in Ash and his car and dumps them in the Middle Ages.
It’s in the third movie, Army of Darkness, that the appearance of the Necronomicon provides a link that explains how both Evil Dead Rise and 2013's Evil Dead – neither of which are direct sequels to the first three movies – could share the same demonic universe.
Trying to return to his own time from the Middle Ages (Army of Darkness picks up where Evil Dead II leaves off), Ash is sent off on a quest by a wise man to find the Necronomicon, but when he gets to the place where the book sits, he finds not one but three copies of the Book of the Dead.
He grabs one of them, but what happens to the other two? One idea is that it is these other books that show up in 2013's Evil Dead and 2023's Evil Dead Rise.
It would make sense that there is one book for Ash, which he has in the first three movies and also the TV series, Ash vs Evil Dead, and that the books that turn up in the other films are different copies.
Certainly, star Bruce Campbell is on board with this theory.
"There are three of these books out there, as we found out in Army of Darkness, so you never know where they’re going to pop up," he told Collider.
"So this story [in Evil Dead Rise] is really 'Where is the book now?' The book is in this particular place in Los Angeles and a set of circumstances kind of release it into the world again, and it lands upon this one particular family in a gritty old high-rise building in Los Angeles. It's cool, it's a cool setting."
It does make perfect sense. In the rebooted Evil Dead, the movie ends with the sole survivor, Mia, wandering away unaware that the book she has found has survived the carnage and a cabin fire. Since that film is set in 2013 and Ash vs Evil Dead is assumed to be set later, it helps to assume they are different copies to explain how Ash still has the Necronomicon in his possession in the series.
And in Evil Dead Rise, the Necronomicon and vinyl recordings of its passages that are dated from 1923 are found in an old bank vault, having presumably been buried there for decades, and the book looks different (check out those fangs) from previous versions, too.
"It's all completely hand-made, hand-drawn. It's got a different visual style to what you've seen before internally," director Lee Cronin told Empire. "I even brought in little hints of Celtic influences and different things to give it a hell of a lot of personality."
Cronin also addressed how his version of the Necronomicon could be linked to the previous editions.
"It's the bastard cousin of the other books, and they're the bastard cousin of this," he said. "In one of the early meetings I had with Sam Raimi, I said, 'You know the way in Army of Darkness, there's three [Necronomicons]? You had one, Fede [Álvarez, director of the 2013 Evil Dead] had one, I'm going to take the other one."
The chainsaw
Fans of Evil Dead II will remember that Ash gets a rather novel accessory during his fight with the deadites (the possessed dead, come back to life) at the cabin in the woods.
Attacked by his possessed girlfriend Linda, he kills her and decapitates her with a shovel, but when she rises from the dead she finds a chainsaw in the shed and attacks him with it. While he overpowers her, he finds his hand is possessed where Linda bit him, and he eventually severs the offending appendage using the chainsaw.
Before the end of the movie, Ash has attached the chainsaw to the stump of his arm, which comes in handy (sorry) in Army of Darkness when he has to take on an entire army of deadites.
Bruce Campbell (as Ash) with a chainsaw instead of a hand has become an iconic Evil Dead image, and the limb-severing weapon is featured in the climax of 2013's Evil Dead (where Mia used it on a creature known as The Abomination) and it also makes an appearance in Evil Dead Rise – with a twist.
Not only does hero Beth use a chainsaw in one of the bloodiest scenes in the movie, but the chainsaw itself is a call back to another memorable item from the earlier movies – Ash's Oldsmobile Delta car, as Cronin explained in an interview with Digital Spy.
"I planted the idea of that chainsaw very subtly, very early in the film," he explained. "The chainsaw in an Evil Dead movie is usually red, but I changed the colour and it's the exact colour of the Oldsmobile Delta."
Evil Dead Rise easter eggs
There are lots of other moments that director Lee Cronin has included in Evil Dead Rise that are knowing links to the previous Evil Dead films.
There is a shotgun that is similar to Ash's 'boomstick' from Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, and a scene in which Ellie is trapped in an elevator, with the wires twisting around her arms and legs, harks back to the infamous tree/vines scene from The Evil Dead.
Evil Dead II fans will identify a homage involving a flying eyeball, and if you keep your eyes peeled (sorry, again) you may spot a pizza box from Henrietta's Pizza – a nod to Henrietta, archaeologist Knowby's wife whom he killed and buried in the cellar, only for her to pop up from the floor when Ash is at the cabin.
There are also a couple of (very) hidden cameos from Bruce Campbell himself that we won't spoil here (but if you want to know more, check out Digital Spy's interview with Lee Cronin).
And if the opening camera shot over a lake (near a cabin in the woods) isn't enough to make you realise that Evil Dead Rise is a worthy successor to the previous films, check out what Ellie's daughter Kassie does with her doll, Staffanie.
Yes, she decapitates poor Staffanie in a way very similar to how Ash despatches poor demonic Linda in Evil Dead II…
Evil Dead Rise is now available on Netflix UK.
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