Evil Dead Rise arrived with a heavy legacy on its shoulders. Sam Raimi’s original trilogy and Fede Álvarez’s 2013 reboot each carved out their own identities: slapstick-meets-splatter in the former, relentless sadistic intensity in the latter. Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise doesn’t try to imitate either version wholesale. Instead, it relocates the franchise’s core elements—cabin-in-the-woods isolation, the Necronomicon’s malevolent pull, and gleeful practical gore—into an urban high-rise and asks whether the Evil Dead brand can thrive in a fresh setting. It turns out it can, and with surprising confidence. The film wastes little time establishing tone. After a brief cold open that ties into the larger narrative, the story focuses on a crumbling Los Angeles apartment building and two estranged sisters: Beth, a rootless guitar tech facing a personal crisis, and Ellie, a tattoo artist barely managing life as a single mother of three. What follows is a familiar spiral into possession, madn...