Evil Dead Rise  ★★★½

THERE are horror movie fans and then there are Evil Dead fans.

The former should thoroughly enjoy Evil Dead Rise, the fifth film in this loose franchise that started more than 40 years ago.

Evil Dead fans, or ‘Deadites’, will also have fun debating how much it embodies the spirit of their deity Sam Raimi’s original vision and where it sits in comparison to the other entries.

No doubt they will continue to put the 1981 original The Evil Dead and the 1987 and 1992 films ahead, mainly because they were written and directed by Raimi alone.

But I think 2013’s Evil Dead, directed by Fede Alvarez, was a triumph that took Raimi’s original concept to a new level. The new film, by Irish writer/director Lee Cronin, isn’t quite as good, but it has plenty to recommend, including a final act in keeping with Raimi’s original and several nice tributes to not just the preceding films but also horror classics like The Thing and The Shining.

One of the reasons for the success of the original film was the fact it pitted partners against each other. Ash was forced to dismember his own girlfriend.

The 2013 remake took this idea further by pitting brother against sister and now Evil Dead Rise also adds the emotional construct of a mother against her own children.

Evil Dead Rise is the first film to take the franchise out of the woods and into the suburbs. At times it suffers a little due to the mechanism by which demons are unleashed being very clunky and weighing down the first half of the film, something you couldn’t say about the 2013 entry which started at 11 and never dropped in tension.

But once Rise finds its feet, the thrill-ride is equally horrific, bloody and gory. As usual, one of the major reasons it all works in terms of creating tension and emotional attachment is due to the performances which are good across the board, the standouts being two Australian actresses, Lily Sullivan and Alyssa Sutherland, who play the sisters at the centre of one nightmarish night in a Los Angeles apartment block.

While the original The Evil Dead is an outright modern horror classic, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness were entertaining comic horror entries.

There is nothing comic about the fourth and fifth entries, which is fine by me – come get some more.