Horror

Evil Dead Rise Scores Praise From Stephen King

Videos by ComicBook.com

“While I’m busy promoting, how about Evil Dead Rise?” King shared on Twitter. “It’s gruesome, it’s bloody, it’s even got an elevator vomiting blood. Not to mention chainsaw-fu.”

In the fifthย Evil Deadย film, a road-weary Beth pays an overdue visit to her older sister Ellie, who is raising three kids on her own in a cramped L.A. apartment. The sisters’ reunion is cut short by the discovery of a mysterious book deep in the bowels of Ellie’s building, giving rise to flesh-possessing demons, and thrusting Beth into a primal battle for survival as she is faced with theย most nightmarish version of motherhood imaginable.

Part of what makes King praising the new film so special is longtime fans of the franchise know how King was an integral component of the original film finding its audiences.

An independent production by all definitions, from its budget to members of the cast and crew pulling double and triple duty in their roles on the project, director Sam Raimi proved with The Evil Dead that an intriguing story and unconventional filmmaking methods proved superior to what could be accomplished by a major studio, though Raimi and his team struggled to find a distributor. Luckily, King himself wrote a piece on the film for the Twilight Zone magazine praising the project.

In that piece, King noted that, “What Raimi achieves in Evil Dead is a black rainbow of horror … The camera has the kind of nightmarish fluidity that we associate with the early John Carpenter; it dips and slides and then zooms in so fast you want to plaster your hands over your eyes. The film begins and ends with crazy exhilarating shots that make you want to leap up, cheering.”

In addition to this piece helping the film score distribution, it also allowed Raimi to make a follow-up film with a larger budget, with the opening 20 minutes of Evil Dead 2 being utilized byย Raimi to recreate the entirety of the original The Evil Dead to make for a more complete story for newcomers.

Evil Dead Rise lands in theaters on April 21st.

Are you looking forward to the new movie? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaughย directly on Twitterย to talk all things Star Wars and horror!