Evil Dead Rise: Highlights from Lee Cronin’s Q&A
Last week, I went to the Prince Charles Cinema in London to watch Evil Dead Rise (which is fantastic) and listen to writer/director Lee Cronin talk about making the gory horror.
The film stars Lily Sullivan as Beth, who turns up at her sister Ellie’s high-rise apartment in Los Angeles after a long time away for advice as she’s in a crisis. Her evening with Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and her three children Danny (Morgan Davies), Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Kassie (Nell Fisher) is interrupted by an earthquake, which exposes a hole in the building where the Book of the Dead has (naturally) been buried. Danny brings it back to the apartment and plays vinyl records of the incantations – and hey presto, the deadites are back.
During the Q&A, Cronin (who was hilarious btw) revealed what his first conversation with Sam Raimi was like, how he came up with the story and what Easter eggs are buried within the film.
Here are the highlights from that conversation (please note that there are spoilers in the last two sections):
On his first conversation with Sam Raimi
We talked about everything but Evil Dead. Sam is a filmmaker I have a lot of respect and admiration for, for his career and what he’s done and his energy and all the things he’s brought to cinema. But we didn’t talk about Evil Dead until the last five minutes when I said, ‘Do you want to do anything new with Evil Dead?’ and he was like, ‘Why, you interested buddy?’ I was about to get a plane back to Dublin so we didn’t have any time to talk about it so I made a terrible joke pitch… that was enough to make to remember to call me back the next week and ask me would I really have a good look at what this was and what might happen. I think he was surprised I was an Evil Dead fan based on my previous movie, The Hole in the Ground, but he liked the precision of The Hole in the Ground and thought that would apply really well to Evil Dead. When he knew I was an Evil Dead fan as well, we just started to talk more and more and figure out how to make this movie.
On where he started with the story
I started with the family because I wanted to change the context of the story and bring it into a new world so I started there and then I started to layer the horror back in. For me, my love is the relentless entertainment factor so it made me very pleased to hear laughter tonight because as sick and twisted as the movie is, it’s kind of fun. I knew I needed it to be visceral and hardcore and I didn’t want to let myself down as a fan but I also didn’t want to let myself down as a filmmaker and make sure it’s pretty out there.
On his hope of making an Evil Dead film one day
I knew I wanted to make an Evil Dead movie someday. When the reboot happened in 2013 and I was starting to try and move from making short films into making feature films, which is a long, arduous process, I really wanted, I hoped, I might have the opportunity someday but out there as a distant thought or dream. It was at the end of a three-week water-bottle tour of meeting lots of people after I premiered my debut feature The Hole in the Ground at Sundance. I was a bit annoyed at myself that I’d met Sam but hadn’t really thought about (what to say) if he asked the question. I didn’t think he would, in a way. I also had just been really busy. The guys afforded me time, we didn’t rush into anything, and I needed to find a story that I was interested in telling outside of the gore, if you know what I mean, I needed to find a way in. Fede (Alvarez) did an amazing job rebooting it in 2013 but I didn’t want to reboot a reboot or reboot anything else so I want to take the spirit, lots of callbacks and energy, and make something new with it.
On setting the film in a high-rise apartment
I just thought it was the furthest from a cabin in the woods, which was the top floor of an apartment block in LA. It just seemed like a very particular move. I’m always attracted to the stories around domestic horror because the ultimate cheat sheet as a filmmaker to connect with an audience is to put them in a familiar place. And I think what’s different in this movie to any of the previous ones is that: in the other movies people go to a weird or strange or creepy place and they discover horror, whereas in this place, people are just having their Friday night and the horror comes to them. That was a shift in my mind that I thought was important – to bring the horror home.
On making an Evil Dead movie without Bruce Campbell
With the greatest respect, I adore the movies, like before I even became a filmmaker I’d watch those movies every couple of months, but I just needed to do something different with it and I hope I’ve made the right call. So far, people seem to be excited by the fact that it’s a little bit of a different direction.
On killing children in the movie
It’s weird, for the last few years, what I did for a living was sit down and figure out how to kill children. Once it was Evil Dead and kids, I had to go that way, there was no escape. I also thought it was an interesting place to push the envelope and the weirdest part of all, it’s actually entertaining to do that.
There was one studio, who I won’t name as I hope to work with them someday in a different context, they had asked if I could change Ellie into the babysitter and I was like, ‘Have you read the script? Have you read the themes in the movie?’ So that was a pass. But no, there was very little kickback (on killing kids). And to be fair, one of them is 19 and one of them is 16. She was actually written as 14, anyhow.
On the Evil Dead Easter eggs
I don’t know how many there is. There’s one I’d like to share with Evil Dead fans here: there’s no Oldsmobile Delta. There’s a lot of other icons like the chainsaw and the shotgun, but it didn’t really suit the movie and the family in a way. The Delta was a personal thing to Sam as well in terms of his childhood and how he looked at stuff but typically the colour of a chainsaw in an Evil Dead movie is red but this chainsaw is an exact colour match for the Oldsmobile Delta. There’s a lot of buried Easter eggs like that in the movie.
Evil Dead Rise is released in cinemas on Friday 21st April. Here’s my review.