Evil Dead Rise has just reached cinemas - and there's plenty of green among the gore. Harry Guerin finds out more from writer-director Lee Cronin.
What are the odds that an Irish film fan grows up to write and direct the latest instalment of a horror franchise that sunk its teeth into him when he was a kid and never let go? A million to one? More?
Well, Dubliner Lee Cronin has beaten them.
He's the man behind the lines and the lens for Evil Dead Rise, a brilliantly bonkers new chapter in the corporeal extravaganza that's been having its way with audiences for over 40 years now. After the plaudits piled up for Cronin's feature debut The Hole in the Ground, he was headhunted (yep!) by Evil Dead supremo Sam Raimi to put a new spin on the demonic shenanigans. Opportunity knocked and Cronin got to work, well, like his life depended on it.
The results are as ferocious as they are funny and see Evil Dead Rise barge its way onto the Best of 2023 list. Seriously, if you're not guzzling the popcorn, you'll be trying to decorate the ceiling with it.
"Knowing that I was making an Evil Dead movie, I knew that I needed to push the envelope from the start," says Cronin. "How far I could push it, you only really discover as you continue the process of writing and developing."
"Whenever I'd come up with some of the madcap ideas that are in the movie, I'd always see how far I could push those, how far I could take them. And in a weird way, there's no such thing as too far in a movie like this!" he laughs.
"But what's nice about when you push those things really far, they actually start to become very entertaining for people. One of my greatest pleasures with this movie is that people actually walk out with a smile on their face! They're talking intently about the experience they've just had. So yes, it is a scary horror movie, but it's an audience participation movie that people can really come together and have, as you said, a bonkers experience!"
Filmed in New Zealand but set in a condemned Los Angeles apartment block, Evil Dead Rise finds two sisters (Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland) and three young'uns (Morgan Davies, Gabrielle Echols, Nell Fisher) plunged into the darkest night of the soul when the mayhem-generating Book of the Dead finds its way into their home. Like Cronin's calling card The Hole in the Ground, family is at the centre of the movie - but so are the outré spirit and go-for-the-throat dynamic that the Evil Dead has been calling its own since the original of the species way back in the early 80s.
"Even though the first movie is in a sense very handmade and rough, there is this kind of independent willingness to just push the envelope and to really make it something unique and standout," Cronin enthuses. "For me as a kid when I watched those movies, I felt I'd seen it all - especially something like Evil Dead II, which has so much energy.
"I really wanted to package up that energy and the kind of relentlessness of those movies. That was a key thing I wanted that I think is important to the DNA of an Evil Dead film. Even though this movie is different - new chapter, new characters, different context, very different kind of storyline than we've seen before - it has the energy and the willingness to keep on pushing. That's what got me as a kid and made me feel like, 'Maybe I could do this…'"
Do it and then some. The reviews have been ecstatic, the fans more so, and any fears that Evil Dead Rise might try to pack them in by pulling some punches have proved unfounded. How often have you seen punters cheer when an 18s certificate appears on screen?
"I knew it was always going to be right on the edge and right on the line!" grins Cronin. "I think movie fans would be disappointed if this movie was any softer than it is! They want to go and have that experience. The fun thing is it is terrifying and at times a kind of brutal experience, but all put together in a way that it's hopefully like a thrill-ride for people. Like getting on a rollercoaster that goes into the dark."
Backwards and with 6,500 litres of fake blood dumped on the thrill-seekers along the way. With a love for practical effects over CGI, Cronin has shown he can handle bigger budgets, tougher set-pieces, and keep the tension cranked up from the first frame to the last. Think of someone pulling a wheelie the whole way along a learning curve and you get the idea.
"Probably making The Hole in the Ground, not every time, but on a couple of occasions when the pressure got really hard sometimes, maybe you back off an idea. I sometimes regretted that in a way - just in one or two places," he admits.
"But with this movie, there were way more opportunities to back off and for me to be scared by what I was doing, by the challenges, but I went the other direction. So whenever I felt vulnerable or uncomfortable in terms of doing my job, I was like, 'I'm going to take another ten steps right into this problem and push it as far as I can!'
"I hope I can kind of maintain the confidence I got from doing that when I make more projects, because some of the new things I'm developing and hoping to do in the future, they're going to be major, major challenges to bring to the screen."
Although Cronin is staying tight-lipped about what those new things are, there's one element he's very vocal about - plenty of Irish people will be involved. One of the biggest surprises in a movie that's full of them is the amount of Irish people behind the scenes on Evil Dead Rise. Cronin brought Hollywood and all the hold-my-chainsaw craziness back home.
"It's something I'm super, super proud of," he beams. "Obviously, my producers that I've worked with on my previous work and have longstanding relationships with (Macdara Kelleher and John Keville), I was able to bring them aboard this movie as well and they could play a really important part. My first assistant director, Daire Glynn, travelled across to New Zealand with me - that was the two boyos rocking up to work with all the Kiwis! We had a really amazing experience over there.
"And then I was really happy I was able to bring all of the post-production back to Ireland and work with my composer Stephen McKeon and then so many good artists basically across the board, from visual effects to the colouring and the finishing of the movie. There were many, many, many, many people from Ireland and it's great.
"I always enjoy that part in the credits when I see the Irish crew. It's something I want to keep doing in my career, which is to make Hollywood movies but to be able to bring them home and work with talent, because I'm proud of where I'm from and there's so many talented people there to work with."
He's dead right.
Evil Dead Rise is in cinemas now.
