Editorials
A Visit to the Bloody Set of ‘ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest II’!
In the annals of slasher-movie history, the kills in Robert Hall’s Laid to Rest are some of the most realistic and elaborate ever committed to celluloid. Now, everyone’s favorite chrome-masked killer – I like to think of him as Peeping Tom‘s “Mark Lewis” on steroids – is back for a second round with Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2, again directed by Hall and featuring even more of the top-notch effects work that made the first film so memorable. Back in November B-D reporter Chris Eggertsen had a chance to visit the set, located at the Almost Human compound in Los Angeles, CA, and interviewed a slew of cast and crew while also being granted the opportunity to witness (sort of) an epic single-shot triple-kill scene that will have gore-fiends everywhere salivating once this baby hits the market. See inside for the full report.
“The sheer amount of how insane some of the kill scenes are is really the crazy part. Imagine the Jonathan Schaech kill in the first one; every one of them is that elaborate.” – Almost Human special effects makeup artist/shop manager Erik Porn
“The word ‘ambitious’ is probably an understatement. I call it insanity“, said special effects makeup artist/Almost Human shop manager Erik Porn regarding both the number of kills in the movie (eleven, as opposed to the first film’s six) as well as their crazily elaborate nature.
Porn was currently in the Almost Human makeup room (Almost Human being the A-list, L.A.-based special effects studio founded by Hall) prepping the forehead of actor Alex Jovica (playing “Cochern“, a detective on the Chromeskull case) for a bit in which his character gets a hatchet to the head, in a single-shot, triple-kill extravaganza that would shortly be filmed on a neighboring soundstage. The thesp comically sported two or three circular silver magnets on his brow (“I look like a Buddhist monk“, he remarked), implanted into an impressively realized layer of makeup.
Porn went on to demonstrate the gag for me by picking up the “hatchet” – boasting magnets of its own and cut off at the end so as to suggest its “submersion” deeply below the actor’s dermal layer – and attaching it to Jovica’s forehead via the magic of magnetism. The seemingly-simplistic effect (but not really), accomplished through the wonders of science, garnered a big fat smile of appreciation from me, and if all goes well it should play off beautifully on screen. Of course with Hall at the reins, you can be damn sure it’ll look as realistic as if Jovica were being murdered right before our very eyes.
“Just about every death, Rob’s like, ‘I’m not happy’“, producer Kevin Bocarde (who co-wrote the sequel’s script with Hall and also executive-produced both Laid to Rest and Hall’s earlier directorial effort Lightning Bug) remarked as I sat with him in the catering room behind the soundstage where they were currently preparing to film the ambitious triple-kill scene. “I just think you could’ve actually killed someone for real and Rob might’ve been like, ‘it’s not good enough’.”
Bocarde was joking on that last part (at least I think so), but at the end of the day it’s just that perfectionist quality which made the kills in the first movie look so impressive. Whether you enjoyed it as a film or not, there is a nevertheless a harrowing realism in the Laid to Rest murders you can’t help but stand in awe of, and while this painstaking attention to detail might prove a point of frustration during the production process – and it does, for everyone involved in their creation no doubt – it also results in a fantastic final product. Given the increased number of complex kills in this installment, however, not to mention a shorter time period in which to accomplish them, there was definitely an underlying sense of exhaustion in the air.
“It’s almost crazy how much they’re trying to top the first one“, said Porn. “This has maybe three times the amount of carnage…the sheer amount of how insane some of the kill scenes are is really the crazy part. Imagine the Jonathan Schaech kill [in which his character literally has his face sliced off] in the first one; every one of them is that elaborate.”
So clearly the film is looking to appeal to the audience that made the first film a success, but what of horror fans who demand more than just a few great gore effects to keep them satisfied? If there’s one major complaint that has been echoed ad nauseam by those who don’t count themselves as fans of the first installment, it’s that the film functioned as a showcase for Almost Human’s spectacular effects work while failing to establish itself as a compelling piece of cinema outside of all the arterial blood spray and spilled guts. Interestingly, it’s a sentiment the director himself seems – at least in part – to agree with.
I sat down with Hall in the parking lot outside the soundstage while he enjoyed a quick break from the long setup required for the upcoming single-shot kill scene. He appeared understandably ragged and tired, clearly sapped from the taxing two-and-a-half-week principal photography period. In between answers he took long drags off a cigarette, considering every question through what I expect was a haze of stress and exhaustion (all a part of the creative process).
“I was gonna [hand over the reins] with this one“, he told me, admitting that if it weren’t for financing troubles on other projects he’s been trying to get off the ground he probably wouldn’t have gotten behind the camera – in a directorial capacity, anyway – for the follow-up. “But it’s cool, I’m glad that I’m not because I’m having a lot of fun with it. And it’s also good cause I get to sort of…I won’t say ‘correct’ some of the mistakes from the first one, but I definitely get to re-visit and go, ‘ok, we know you love Chromeskull, [now] here’s another movie around Chromeskull that I think is much better’.“
Let me pause here for a second. I know this may come a shock to some of you, but not all of the effects in the film – both here and in the original – are 100% practical (gasp!), and it was a myth Hall definitely seemed eager to dismiss.
“There is a heavy amount of practical stuff in both movies, but it always has digital augmentation“, he said, while admitting that he too dislikes the sort of overtly CG movie effects that seem to have been pulled from the latest Xbox 360 release. “I think people generalize it too much. I think they don’t understand what they’re saying most of the time when they say ‘I don’t like CG!’ Because the reason that people liked the kills in ‘Laid to Rest’ was actually for the most part because of the place that we’re at with digital technology. It’s not because I went practical. Now what I did do is give you so much great practical stuff that you thought you were seeing all practical stuff. But the nuances that made those deaths great were all as a result of where we are with technology.”
Ok, everybody got that? Good. As for the story, and the performances, and the characters…well, unfortunately that’s something that simply cannot be fixed with a computer, and Hall clearly agrees that some of the criticisms of the first film were valid. So exactly how is he intending on addressing them?
Well for starters, there’s a much greater emphasis on plot and character than there was in the previous entry, in a way that will hopefully please the critics of part one (Hall also made sure to point out that two of the major complaints he heard from horror fans regarding the first film -none of the characters seemed to have cell phones and there were too few cops – have been more than addressed in the sequel). Included in the fleshed-out Chromeskull (or “Chromey“, as everyone seemed to be calling the character on set) mythology is the revelation of an organization that is somehow connected, behind the scenes, to the killer’s earlier series of sadistic murders. However, as Hall made perfectly clear during our conversation, this revelation is much more about the “how” than the “why“. In the grand tradition of narrative subtlety, he prefers to leave Chromeskull’s core motivations up to the imagination.
“I always think it’s super cheesy to spell everything out for the audience“, he told me. “No matter what I would come up with – I could get Frank Darabont in here and be like, ‘what do you think?’ And it wouldn’t be good enough. No explanation is good enough to go, ‘This is why he does it. He’s pissed at his mom. Kids made fun of him’. Whatever! It doesn’t make any sense. I think we’re all pretty smart and we live in this world where we know people do fucked up, perverted, horrible things. And we will never, ever know why Jeffrey Dahmer had people in his house. Ever! Like decapitated hookers or whatever. I don’t know why the guy in Canada a year and a half ago stabbed the guy with the iPod next to him and severed his head and walked to the front [of the bus with it]…If you were even to ask these people, I don’t think you would get a clear enough explanation to put it in a movie, so I think Chromeskull is one of those people…his kills are obviously sexually charged, and that’s all you need to know. I think it’s much scarier that way.”
It was a sentiment agreed to not only by co-writer and producer Kevin Bocarde – who expressed that one of his main attractions to the first script was the fact that we never find out why Chromeskull kills – but star Nick Principe, returning for his second outing as the savage masked killer.
“You still don’t get a backstory with Chromeskull, and I don’t think we ever will do a backstory, because I always like to say evil doesn’t need explanation“, Principe told me as I sat across from him in the catering room adjoining the soundstage. “Evil is just evil. It existed before man; it’ll be here when we’re gone.”
Lest we forget, Chromeskull’s specific brand of evil was nearly snuffed out at the end of the first movie, when his face was not only horribly melted by acid but caved in with a baseball bat wielded by “The Girl“/aka “Princess Gemstone“. A gruesome, seemingly irrevocable fate, begging the question of exactly how Chromeskull will manage to return in this installment short of being resurrected from beyond the grave. In other words – do we have another Jason Voorhees on our hands?
“I personally contacted some cosmetic surgeons“, said Principe regarding the feasibility of Chromeskull’s resurgence minus (a line of inquiry also extensively tackled by Hall, who undertook two months of research before determining it was possible). “[I asked], ‘what if someone had their face melted off, all the muscle tissue was gone, and there was nothing but the skeleton, and then the skeleton of the front part got shattered – is there any way that someone could walk away from that? And they were like, ‘well, if the brain wasn’t too badly damaged, and they got immediate medical attention – sure they could live, but they would not be pretty whatsoever’.”
“He’s never gonna be selling his soul to Satan or whatever“, stated Bocarde, though he wouldn’t 100% rule out the insertion of some supernatural components, say, “five movies” down the line. “Yeah, there’s a fantasy element to obviously a guy in a mask running around killing people, getting shot and keeps coming, yes. But we try to keep it somewhat grounded in reality.”
Given that the second film will, by the producer’s assertion, continue exactly where the first one left off, the concept of “reality” certainly plays a role in the first half of the film, given the amount of time it will take for the tech-savvy killer to recover from his severe injuries. And this is precisely where series newcomer Brian Austin Green – playing the character of “Preston” – comes into the mix. While the former 90210/ Sarah Connor Chronicles star wasn’t on set that day, Principe did delve a bit into Green’s function in the film.
“He’s kinda like [Chromeskull’s] underling if you will“, said the long-limbed actor, rocking his particular brand of sleepy-voiced charm. “He helps me clean up my messes so nobody notices or whatever. And he starts to want to become me. This is all during my little healing process from the first film. And you find out that the hand at the end of the first film was actually his hand, not mine, taking the camera. So there’s a little bit of a period of time where I’m healing, where I’m not really in it as much. Well, killing at least. There are lots of scenes of me healing and dealing with staph or whatever, and he handles some of the murders, and that pisses me off. And then I go on a rampage.”
It was this quote that put the “assembly cut” footage I’d earlier been shown (by Hall’s lovely assistant, multi-hyphenate horror chick Heather Wixson) into context. The footage basically consisted of Green’s character taking on the killer’s persona to “[tie] up some loose ends from the first [movie]” (Wixson’s description), in one clip receiving a “Chromeskull” tattoo and later donning the mask when he murders a young dark-haired woman by splitting her open. To accomplish that kill in a single shot, Hall utilized, in his own words, “an old magician’s trick“, the secret to which I won’t spoil here but one which was quite seamless and impressive when I watched it playing out on screen.
To sum up, the bare bones of the plot is essentially this: a) Chromeskull is saved from certain death by the organization that supports his activities; b) while Chromeskull is recovering, Preston (Brian Austin Green) sets out to take on his identity; c) Preston takes care of “the girl situation” from the end of the first movie and hunts down and captures Tommy (Thomas Dekker, in a greatly-expanded role); d) a revived Chromeskull stalks and snatches a new sexy blonde named “Jessica Cannon“, played by Mimi Michaels (Boogeyman 3); e) Chromeskull and Preston face off as the cops close in on the secret headquarters where Tommy and Jessica find themselves imprisoned.
Also joining the series this time around (in the role of “Spann“) is scream queen Danielle Harris (what low-budget horror flicks hasn’t she appeared in lately?), who wasn’t on set that day but whose character was described to me as another behind-the-scenes player in Chromeskull’s sick games. The prolific actress agreed to appear in the film but requested not to be cast in the “damsel in distress” role horror audiences have grown accustomed to seeing her play.
“She had said to [Rob], ‘I wanna do your movie, but is there any way I could do something different for me?’” said Bocarde. “And we’re like, ‘great, awesome’. Let’ s find something different for you to do. And I remember Rob sat down and I was like, ‘ok, let’s have her do this, this, this…’”
Also joining the huge “who’s-who” cast – in a bid by Hall and Bocarde to one-up the first film performance-wise – are television veteran Gail O’Grady (NYPD Blue, American Dreams) in the role of “Nancy Cannon“, 6’5” bruiser Brett Wagner (The Crazies), and Owain Yeoman, currently starring on The Mentalist, as “Detective King“, who leads the quest to locate and rescue Tommy and Jessica from Chromeskull’s clutches. Yeoman actually stepped in at the eleventh hour for actor Michael Biehn, who was originally cast in the role, when Biehn backed out of appearing in the film at the last minute to star in another project. And while there was clearly some bad blood there (“it’s too bad when you find out childhood heroes suck in real life“, remarked Principe), Yeoman nevertheless proved to be a more than adequate replacement.
“Owain’s been awesome“, enthused Bocarde. “There was a night [he] actually bought a coffee cart for everyone, just had this truck come out and make coffees to order and lattes and other [stuff].”
“Owain is probably better than Michael ever would’ve been anyways“, asserted Principe.
“I’ve never been offered a job at midnight before“, laughed Yeoman about receiving the belated offer to appear in the film. “[Rob] called me at like ten to midnight, and I was in bed. And he was like, ‘you fancy doing this movie?’ And I was like, ‘sure, when does it start?’ And he goes, ‘you started three days ago’.”
Despite the actor’s stint as a series regular on the top-rated CBS procedural, luckily Yeoman – who had worked with Hall on the pilot of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, in which he played the role of a Terminator known as “Cromartie” – was able to carve out enough time in his schedule to join the Laid to Rest fold.
“I was lucky enough to have [Rob] do some second-unit stuff with me on ‘Sarah Connor’, where he took charge of some of the action stuff“, said the square-jawed Yeoman, quick to laugh and giving off a genuinely friendly vibe. “He is incredibly relaxed, he knows what he wants. And I think that’s…you know, that level of decisiveness is something that as an actor I always appreciate, someone who knows their stuff. Working in T.V. you get to see a very quick turnover of directors, so you get to work with a lot of people who have very different styles. And the one thing that I always find most effective as a director is someone who just comes prepared, and who knows what they want, and can be in a good dialogue.”
Yeoman’s almost ethereal co-star Mimi Michaels, who I spoke with as she was sitting in a makeup chair getting a “leg wound” inflicted by Chromeskull applied to her calf, similarly raved over the director.
“He’s great, he’s so open to hearing what the actor has to say“, she said with a smile. “He lets you have freedom and he lets you play, but he keeps you on track. He’ll throw out little things here and there, say things that’ll just be right on the mark and really get you to that place that you need to go.”
And boy, does her character go places.
“It’s been pretty exhausting“, she said, reflecting on the intensely physical nature of her role. “It’s a lot of running around, crying, screaming, being thrown around…fun stuff. I like that.”
Also doing time in the makeup room that day was Brett Wagner, who plays the role of “Tiny“, one of the detectives on the case, who is searching for missing comrade “Holland” (played by former adult actress Angelina Armani). The beefy actor, who worked with Hall during the shoot for last year’s The Crazies, in which he appeared as a “crazed hunter” named Jesse and on which Almost Human handled the special makeup effects, was back on set to re-shoot his kill scene, certain elements of which Hall wasn’t happy with after the first pass.
“My death was a little, uh…we gotta come back in and do it again“, said the actor. “Rob’s kind of a perfectionist.”
Working in horror films is a dream job for Wagner, a hardcore lover of the genre who professed he initially desired to play the part of Chromeskull before Principe won the part. Nevertheless, he was just happy to land a role in the project at all, given the name value of many in the cast and the opportunity to work with a director he believes will move on to much bigger projects down the line: “I think in the next couple years you’ll be seeing [Rob being] offered $5, $10 million, $15 million budgets to direct.”
Dominating the interior of the soundstage on which they’d be filming the ambitious triple-kill scene that day was a square, enormous chain-link “kill cage” containing dozens and dozens of bladed weapons, both hanging from the sides and set atop a long wooden table set in the middle. The most memorable sight, however, was that of a severed male head -a trophy collected from one of Chromeskull’s recent victims – dangling from chains in one corner of the cage.
The scene essentially involves several detectives cornering Chromeskull inside the “kill cage” at his lair, before systematically losing their lives in appropriately grisly fashion. As crewmembers scurried about prepping the complicated shot, Hall smoked a cigarette while pacing just on the outskirts, intermittently approaching a crew or cast member through the chain link to go over a particular facet of the scene.
Several of these interactions included director of photography Amanda Treyz, manning the handheld camera inside the cage and decked out in a poncho so as not to get all mussed up by the copious blood spray required of the upcoming kills. The petite camerawoman, tasked with capturing an incredibly difficult shot, looked to be mapping out the blocking with Hall to assure a smooth, hiccup-free take. Indeed, given the amount of time and energy required to re-set a scene utilizing so much blood (fun fact: a total of about 20 gallons of the fake stuff was used on LTR2), the imperative here was to attempt a perfect first run.
After watching a couple of rehearsals in which kinks in the logistics were ironed out, I was then alerted Yeoman had arrived and was available for an interview. Believing there was enough time left in the setup process to sit down for a quick chat with the actor, I stepped out momentarily to do my due journalistic diligence; it was only when I heard loud shouts emanating from the soundstage – freeze! put your hands up! don’t you fucking move! – I realized I may have just missed the real thing going down. And I had…dammit. (Note: this in no way indicates regret in talking with Yeoman, who is like a ray of sunshine blessed with a delicious British accent. I only regret that the two pleasurable developments happened to coincide.)
Luckily this was the movies, and the triple-kill was caught on camera (imagine that!), so I was able to watch playback on the monitor over Hall’s shoulder. He seemed very pleased with the result, and I was certainly impressed, particularly given the difficult strategy required in pulling off the handheld shot. Typical of a Rob Hall production, the gore looked as real as gore can look without actually being real, and Principe – decked out in the Chromeskull mask and a sharp-looking suit – was appropriately intimidating. Props must also go to Treyz, who looked to have pulled off the difficult task quite admirably, as well as the effects team, who really went above and beyond the blood-soaked call of duty. And while I would’ve preferred to have seen the thing go down live, I still came away with my movie-gore bloodlust satisfied.
So that’s it, right? Moving right along? Not exactly. Hall was pleased, no doubt about it – but ever the perfectionist, there were a few elements he felt needed another go (a second take which I was unable to witness, as I had a prior engagement to rush off to). At this point I could almost hear the grumbling from cast and crew (particularly those tasked with scrubbing the fake blood, chain link by agonizing chain link, from the cage), but it’s not as if Hall doesn’t recognize his own OCD tendencies. He also doesn’t apologize for them.
“I need to make sure I don’t cheat and I do everything right“, he’d told me earlier. “I think that’s driving everybody crazy right now. [Laughs] But we raised the bar intentionally on the first movie, so I have to deliver on this one.“
Note: As to the prospects for a third movie, it of course all depends on how well this next installment does financially-speaking. Whether it will be a prequel or a sequel remains an open question, as Bocarde indicated it will most likely be a sequel and Hall contended it will probably be a prequel. Stay tuned…
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Evil Dead Burn.
Fans of The Evil Dead franchise have become accustomed to an excess of gore. From the low-fi horror of Sam Raimi’s 1981 original and the slapstick comedy of Army of Darkness to Fede Álvarez’s 2013 remake, which literally ends in a rain of blood, grotesque dismemberment and comedic violence are as important to an Evil Dead film as the outline of Bruce Campbell’s iconic jaw.
Sébastien Vaniček‘s franchise installment, Evil Dead Burn, follows suit with wall-to-wall violence and set pieces built around extreme carnage. As the Deadites rise once again, Alice (Souheila Yacoub) must fight to the death against her possessed in-laws hell-bent on punishing her for their family’s sins.
Co-written by Vaniček and Florent Bernard, Evil Dead Burn follows the ill-fated Price family, descendants of Dr. Benjamin Price who discovered an ancient dagger capable of sending Kandarian demons back to hell. Newly uncovered from its protective spell, this dagger has called to the evil dead and led them to the family’s ramshackle home. Keeping plot to a bare minimum, Vaniček fills nearly every scene with powerful Deadites and their dastardly acts as they torture the Prices to find the weapon. Horrific moments like a woman drinking hot wax from a lit candle and a shocking post-credits child murder don’t even crack the top ten of disgusting, painful, and disturbing carnage that floods the film.
In any other franchise, we would be listing the film’s most gruesome kills. But fans of Evil Dead know that when we’re talking about the Necronomicon, mere death is only the beginning.
10 ) Deadites Burn
Though Burn checks off all the Evil Dead boxes, its story is a franchise anomaly. Rather than possessing anyone who crosses their path, Vaniček’s Deadites have set their sights specifically on an unwitting clan, intent on recovering the powerful dagger. Resurrected from a nearby lake, Deadite Jessica (Greta van den Brink) informs us of this plan while murdering the eldest Price son. Will (George Pullar) is speeding down a deserted road when he slams into the malevolent demon standing in the middle of the road. After his car rolls off the deserted road, he awakens to find himself upside down, a strange woman lodged in his cracked windshield.
As he desperately tries to reach his phone, Jessica slowly twists her head, tearing the skin of her distended neck. Completely detached from her shattered body, the demon’s head rolls out the window and begins chanting a Kandarian curse. Will’s car bursts into flames as Jessica vows to seek out the rest of his family. While burning alive, Will learns that he is merely the first on a deadly hitlist filled with the people he loves most.
9) Dinner from Hell
Despite a remarkably streamlined plot, Vaniček hints at the Price family’s extensive dysfunction. An uncomfortable dinner erupts in aggression as they gather for lunch after Will’s funeral. Mother Susan (Tandi Wright) berates her recently widowed daughter-in-law while father Edgar (Erroll Shand) — already under Kandarian influence — blames younger son Joseph (Hunter Doohan) for his eldest son’s death. No one is safe as long-held tensions break through to the surface and family secrets ricochet through the air.
With Edgar behaving erratically, Alice and Thya (Luciane Buchanan), Joseph’s girlfriend, try to move sharp objects out of his reach. But Edgar manages to get a hold of a fork and turns his rage on the family dog. As he stabs Max repeatedly in the face, Joseph tries to pull his father away. Both are injured in the struggle and rush to the hospital, leaving Susan and Alice to deal with the corpse. A horrific moment of animal cruelty, this scene sets up a no-holds-barred film in which anyone can be brutalized. But perhaps most disturbing is the viciousness already lurking in this troubled family, barely concealed resentments that existed long before the Kandarian threat.
8 ) Bathroom Brawl
As Deadites possess the Price family, Alice barricades herself in an upstairs bathroom. She reluctantly shields her mother-in-law, despite Susan’s atrocious behavior. Almost immediately, Alice regrets this decision when the woman reveals the depths of her hatred. She rejects clear evidence of Will’s domestic abuse, continuing to blame Alice for their troubled marriage. Leaning her cheek against a scalding hot radiator, Susan submits to Kandarian possession and becomes a Deadite before our eyes. Though disturbing on its face, she seems to choose possession over an honest reckoning of her family’s dark secrets.
Now a Deadite, Susan attacks Alice with broken shards of the toilet bowl and wraps the shower curtain around her head. Scampering across the ceiling, she hangs her daughter-in-law by the neck with the plastic sheet as Alice desperately gasps for air. With only her hand free, Alice gouges Susan’s face with a safety razor, finally managing to break herself free. As Deadite Susan taunts her from the corner, Alice revs up a brush trimmer and plunges the circular blade into her shoulder and chest. We cheer for Alice as she finally pushes back against Susan’s passive-aggressive disdain.
7) The Pen is Mightier
In a sea of blood-splattered dismemberment, one scene is so tense that it makes us squirm despite its lack of visual gore. With the family’s ailing matriarch possessed, Deadite Polly (Maude Davey) attacks Alice in the upstairs hallway, pressing her face against the bush trimmer’s still blade. Insisting that Alice has caused Will’s death, Polly invites the grieving woman to avenge her child by turning on the power tool. An instant before her mother-in-law can send the blade tearing into her cheek, Alice manages to escape by jamming a shard of glass into Polly’s eye. But not before the elderly demon can deliver a cringe-worthy injury.
Though Alice struggles with all her might, Polly slowly drives a fountain pen into the younger woman’s ear canal. Ringing blots out all other sounds as Alice’s face twists in pain. We imagine a tiny object bursting through our own eardrums, puncturing the soft tissue lying beneath. Though Alice tries to extract the pen, she only succeeds in breaking it off, leaving half of the quill buried in her ear. She will eventually use tweezers to remove the tip, sparking another moment of deafening agony.
6) Chekhov’s Dishwasher
As Susan prepares for the aforementioned family meal, Vaniček drops a delicious bit of foreshadowing. While the grieving mother thaws frozen food, she absently fills an old dishwasher whose door has long since busted its latch. Reminiscent of a scene from Final Destination, the faulty appliance falls open, leaving a shelf full of gleaming forks and knives suspended a foot above the floor, just waiting for their moment to strike. After returning from a fatal incident we’ll discuss in a moment, Deadite Thya returns to the Price home, hell-bent on retrieving the powerful knife.
As she advances on Joseph, the frightened son retreats to the kitchen and brandishes a carving knife, subtly nodding to an ultra-violent kitchen scene in Álvarez’s Evil Dead. But Thya will not be deterred. Advancing on her boyfriend, the Deadite startles him into tripping on the outstretched door and impaling himself on the upturned utensils. She presses Joseph further onto the blades while he plunges a corkscrew into her throat. But even this will not stop the maniacal demon, who rips her throat open with the wine tool, dripping her blood over Joseph’s upturned face. Adding insult to injury, she marvels at his willingness to kill the woman he professed to love, casting a pall over their entire relationship. Not only gruesome and excruciatingly tense, but this moment plays into Joseph’s insecurities as the failed son of this disturbed family.
5 ) On the Lake
Evil Dead Burn begins on a seemingly peaceful lake overrun with lurking Kandarian demons. Jared (Keanu Karim) is trying to enjoy a quiet day of fishing but can’t stop his friend Leo (Victory Ndukwe) from answering the phone. Along the dock, Jared notices a bite on Leo’s reel and eventually pulls up a severed head savvy viewers may recognize from Lee Cronin’s 2023 sequel Evil Dead Rise. Moments later, Jared finds himself ensnared by reels, hooks digging into the corner of his mouth and eyelid. As the fishing line wraps around his neck, he’s dragged, screaming, into the lake.
Leo returns in the pouring rain and sees Jared desperately calling for help. He quickly boats out to save his friend, but a mysterious force pulls him down into the depths. Leo finally drags Jared back into the boat, only to see that his body has been cut in half, intestines spilling out of his bisected waist. As he struggles to make sense of this carnage, Deadite Jessica emerges from the lake and capsizes the boat, her clenched demon hands causing the water to boil. Though Leo manages to swim to shore, his skin is a blistered and bubbly mess. Deadite Jessica absently steps on his hand, easily peeling away flesh like overcooked meat. This jaw-dropping opener not only sets the stage for a brutal film, but situates the story in franchise lore while simply explaining the Deadites’ return.
4) Car Trouble
The shocking trailer to Evil Dead Burns shows the aftermath of a vicious attack. As Deadite Thya crosses the family threshold, the camera reveals a car’s headrest still impaling her face. But this devastating sight merely hints at the cruel circumstances of her actual death. Incapacitated in the disastrous family dinner, Edgar slumps in the backseat while Joseph tends to his wounds. Though seemingly incapacitated, the possessed father snaps to attention and wraps his seatbelt around Thya’s neck, pushing against the back of her seat. Joseph holds a gun to his father’s head, but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
As Thya tries to escape the car, Edgar viciously slams the door, severing four of her fingers. She manages to trigger a fire extinguisher, filling the car with cloudy white chemicals and giving Joseph a chance to escape. But Thya is not so lucky. Trapped in the car, she screams as Edgar pummels her with a detached headrest, stabbing the poles through her neck and face. Joseph watches from a safe distance as his father beats his girlfriend to death, knowing he was unable to save her life.
3) Head Shots
When Deadite Thya comes stumbling back home, Joseph believes he’s seen the worst. Unfortunately, his misery is only beginning. After fighting off his newly-sadistic undead girlfriend, he tries to flee with his surviving family, only to find Deadite Edgar blocking his path. Flanked by Deadite Max, Edgar taunts his son by insisting that he should be dead in Will’s place and confirming the young man’s greatest fears. Edgar then does what Joseph could not and shoots himself in the head.
The family screams in horror at this devastating sight, then freezes in stunned silence as Edgar does not fall. Grinning, the maniacal father shoots himself twice more, blowing gaping holes in the sides of his head. For the rest of the film, Deadite Edgar will terrorize his family with these unthinkable wounds, even tempting his wife with a bloody kiss. Vaniček mixes emotional devastation with gore as Joseph must watch his father’s suicide while confronting the truth of his own ineptitude.
2) Down Through the Chimney
Along with references to the beloved Ash (Campbell), it’s become tradition for an Evil Dead film to reference the franchise’s signature weapon. But Vaniček subverts our expectations when Edgar’s chainsaw is out of gas. Instead, Alice employs a rusty bush trimmer to fight off her Deadite mother-in-law. Unfortunately, the extended weapon only shreds her flesh, leaving the monstrous woman still able to fight. Trapped in the attic, Alice must clamber out of an upper window with Deadite Susan hot on her heels.
Having dropped the ceremonial knife off the third-story roof, Alice has no choice but to improvise. Toting the bush trimmer, she inches her way down the chimney, pausing to turn halfway down. As Susan follows her daughter-in-law down the chute, Alice turns on the bush trimmer and waits for impact. Vaniček brings us into the living room as buckets of blood and dismembered body parts begin to rain down over the hearth. It’s the kind of moment Evil Dead fans love, gleefully gory carnage via an unexpected power tool.
1 ) Goodbye Stranger
Despite this plethora of grisly gore, Vaniček’s final act tops the list while delivering a poignant beat of empowerment. With the house on fire and the Deadites subdued, we believe that Alice is finally safe. But as she watches the Price home burn to the ground, the corpse of her husband walks out of the flames. He taunts her memories of their abusive marriage, insisting that she stayed because she likes the pain. Demanding the sacred weapon, Deadite Will chases Alice to a construction site and into an open hydraulic press. In the fall, Alice impales her ankle on a massive spike, leaving her trapped as the pit fills with boiling hot tar.
But Alice finds the strength to save herself and pulls her ankle off the bloody spike. She distracts Will with a decoy knife, then pummels his chest with a jackhammer. Exacerbating her emotional pain, Deadite Will reminds her of his love. But it seems that Alice has had enough. She stabs him with the ceremonial blade, then crushes his head as it turns to ash. It’s a well-earned moment of empowerment as our final girl vanquishes her most powerful demon.
Vaniček’s crowd-pleaser continues the Evil Dead trend of gleefully crude massacres. Two extra scenes hint at a continuation of this gruesome massacre, promising more brutality in films to come.
You must be logged in to post a comment.