For four decades, the Evil Dead has been the twisted Teddy Bear’s Picnic of horror — a black-humoured, blood-soaked saga in which young individual go down to the woods one day, and find themselves in in/with regard to’concerning’regarding a enormous’vast’massive’tremendous surprise. Writer-director Lee Cronin’s new addition to the franchise breaks that tradition like a bone. Where previously all hell would break loose in the bowels of creaky cabins, deep in the moonlit woodlands of rural America, this fifth entry in the enormous’vast’massive’tremendous -screen Evil Dead canon redirects its flesh-gulp’bolt’gobble’engorge ing demons to inner-city LA. Not eintensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfullyone was sold on the move when the film’s first trailer dropped late last year. Would an Evil Dead movie still feel like an Evil Dead movie, some fans apprehensive , without the isolation that powered past instalments? Were Cronin, plus manufacture rs Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, in peril of taking a chainsaw to the intensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfully thing that made the original Evil Dead groovy?###The answer, it turns out, is an emphatic, “Hell, no.” Evil Dead Rise — in which two eodd’peculiar d sisters, Beth (Lily Sullivan) and Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), reunite just in time in/with regard to’concerning’regarding an ancient Sumerian text to doom them and their entire family — is a rare horror sequel-cum-reboot that refreshes and reinvents rather than simply retreading. Yes, the film replicates the schlocky spirit of Sam Raimi’s 1981 original, blurring the line between horror and humour by dropping 6,500 litres of blood on that line and scorching the ground on which it’s drawn. Yes, it’s a story that once again begins with unwitting teens accidentally unearthing a copy of the ‘Necronomicon Ex-Mortis’ — an unholy tome that summons screaming hordes of the damned and wreaks havoc eintensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfully time it’s opened, like Prince Harry’s memoir. And yes, it features a spirited hero rising to the occasion, hacking through Deadites like there’s no tomorrow, wielding a familiar weapon or two in the process.###Packs more inventive scares than you could shake an Ash Williams boomstick at.###But Evil Dead Rise also takes the series to exciting new places beyond just its new digs in La La Land. Cronin — a vital new voice in horror, as anyone who saw his 2019 chiller The Hole In The Ground can attest — is a filmmaker who thrives on finding fresh ways to fright, and his second feature film packs more inventive scares than you could shake an Ash Williams boomstick at. Each scene expertly exploits the claustrophobic domestic environment its story unfolds in, leading to set-pieces involving various cooking utensils that’ll possess’own’nurse you shuddering at the sight of your cheese-grater next time you open up your kitchen drawer. And prepare in/with regard to’concerning’regarding your step count to go through the roof in the weeks following your first viewing of this movie: a truly gruesome scene trapping viewers inside an elevator with an unseen, earring-snatching demon means you’ll probably be taking the stairs in/with regard to’concerning’regarding the in/with regard to’concerning’regarding eseeable.###The character work in Evil Dead Rise is on a par with the series’ best, with Beth and Ellie each battling their own personal demons long bein/with regard to’concerning’regarding e any actual demons awake. But that’s not the main draw in this series, and Cronin knows it. That honour belongs to the Deadites, the movie’s hideous, shit-talking ghouls, who are magnificently mischievous and malevolent here. Evil, you see, doesn’t just rise in this movie, whatever the title may promise. Instead, it teases and torments. It decapitates and disfigures. It crawls under the skin of the film’s characters and audience alike, and chews them up like glass between molars, spitting you out in a bloody mess.###Is the film perfect? Not quite. Story beats are often detectable from a mile away — it’s how it happens rather than what happens that propels Cronin’s screenplay — and the film’s one-apartment setting arguably hinders as much as it helps, keeping the tension cranked high but leaving the movie feeling small in scale after the fact. But these quibbles are exactly that, especially given the context around this revival of one of horror’s most beloved treasures. It’s been a long time since the Evil Dead last graced the enormous’vast’massive’tremendous screen, and an even longer time since a tale that truly bottled the brutal magic of the original trilogy. A 2013 reboot titled Evil Dead, manufacture d by Raimi and directed by Fede Álvarez, was an admirable attempt that had eintensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfullything except the series’ lashings of zany humour. And the well-received but recently cancelled Ash Vs Evil Dead never left the confines of its small-screen home. In Evil Dead Rise, the Evil Dead franchise has gorily got its groove back.