#19: EVIL DEAD RISE

Starring Lilly Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols and Nell Fisher. Written and directed Lee Cronin. Budget $19 million. Running time 97 minutes.

Oh deep joy, I thought when I saw this was an 18 certificate horror film, you don't get that many of those  these days. Be careful what you wish for.

Bloody hell, 97 minutes later and I'm exhausted. This was a relentless and utterly over-the-top gore fest of pure savagery with none of the humour of the original Evil Dead trilogy, yet endless nods of the head to that masterful originator. The sheer nihilism of this coupled with the unrelenting violence becomes such an onslaught that it leaves you feeling as if you're a survivor when you finally stumble out after its ended. 

This is most certainly infinitely better than that awful reboot of ten years ago, but that's about it in terms of positives. With nudge-nudge winks to the original, and tedious signposting, the cabin in the woods replaced with a rundown tenement block in Los Angeles, and our original hero, Ash, replaced by Beth a guitar technician visiting her tattooist sister just before an earthquake unleashes the forces of evil - again. 

The violence mostly metered out to teenage children is nasty, savage and brutal. The kids are either shot to death, have their eyes ripped out of their skulls, infected by evil, stabbed, grated, shot, hacked, chainsawed or are feed into wood chippers. There is no humour and no salvation at play here, just an unending plunge into an abyss of grimness. When we discover that the only way to defeat the demonic forces is total dismemberment, several items signposted at the beginning come into gory play at the end. 

The original 1981 film managed to be all of the above and yet not seem so bleak, and filled with such hopelessness. Ash seemed to offer us hope, and whereas this new outing gives us a new hero, obviously a woman, and a chainsaw, it lacks any hope, and most importantly it gives us no release from the horror. Humour and horror often work so well together, the former helping to break the spell of the later, but in this, we can have no release, no salvation, just despair.   

This is well mounted, well directed and ratchets up the tension but ultimately I found the whole thing just too nasty, unpleasant and horrific to enjoy. It would seem that I have finally outgrown my love of horror films and gore. 

6/10