Movies
Rumor: Does ‘Evil Dead Rise’ Take Place in a Skyscraper?!
After years and years and years of begging for an Evil Dead 4, Sam Raimi not only gifted horror fans with the brutal 2013 remake/sidequel, but also the “Ash vs Evil Dead” series brought Bruce Campbell back as the mouthy ass-kicking Ashley J. Williams. While Campbell has officially retired Ash, the Necronomicon is still out there with deadites looking for more souls to swallow.
Campbell, who is also a producer on all things Evil Dead, let slip that the next installment will be directed by The Hole in the Ground’s Lee Cronin and will be removed from the cabin in the woods setting.
The title, which initially revealed to be Evil Dead Now, was quickly amended to Evil Dead Rise.
But what does it mean?
Bloody Disgusting contributor Jimmy Champane, who also has his own YouTube channel, got the scoop on the new settings, telling his audience that his source revealed to him that the next Evil Dead will take place in a building or skyrise/skyscraper/high-rise, hence the title. While it may seem like an obvious conjecture, he was told this information when the film was titled Evil Dead Now, which only stoked the flames even more. If it matters, we know and trust Jimmy, but let’s still file this one under rumor until confirmed.
We’ve seen quite a few horror movies hit the high-rise, from Poltergeist III to [REC]2, Joe Lynch’s Mayhem and Ciarán Foy’s Citadel, and even the sequel to Halloween was nearly a high-rise apartment-set slasher.
With that said, what do you all think? Are you happy to see the Evil Dead franchise move to new locations or would you prefer it remains in a cabin in the woods setting? Tell us below.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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