The Evil Dead franchise is back — and with no shortage of maggots! From an elevator of blood
to a horrifying scene that will make you think twice about using a cheese grater,
these are some of the most skin-crawling moments in Evil Dead Rise. Warning: spoilers ahead!
In a change of scenery for the Evil Dead series, we leave the cabin in the woods behind in favor
of a rundown LA apartment occupied by Ellie, her three kids — Danny, Bridget,
and Kassie — and her sister, Beth. The film ends by coming full circle, revealing what led to the
film's horrific opening sequence. In the closing scene, we're shown the morning after the anarchy,
with the apartment complex finally in a state of calm. It's then that we see that Jessica,
the possessed girl from the opening, once lived in the same apartment as Ellie and her
family. We quickly learn that she slept through the earthquake and subsequent
mayhem of the night before, completely oblivious to the nightmare that's occurred.
As she heads into the parking garage, she FaceTimes with Teresa. However, as Jessica
prepares to leave the garage, she notices the aftermath of the previous night. This includes
several puddles of blood and Ellie's wrecked car. Just as she starts to freak out, she's swarmed on
both sides by more Deadite spirits. Following a powerful earthquake,
the three siblings stumble across a hole in the parking garage. Danny descends into it and
finds a decrepit bank vault. After a fake-out jumpscare courtesy of a Jesus statue, Danny
stumbles across a payload of old documents and vinyl records. It's then that he finds an altar
of sorts, adorned with a surplus of crosses and crucifixes, that contains the Book of the Dead.
The trio return to the apartment, where Danny and Bridget begin examining the book,
hoping that it might be worth some money. The book's pages are locked with sharp teeth and
sinister veins are worming across the cover. It's those very sharp teeth that nick Danny,
causing his blood to drip onto the book where it is quickly absorbed into the cover. The book's
teeth then unlock, revealing pages upon pages of images depicting possession, evil rituals,
and horrific human sacrifices. Following Ellie's possession,
she makes several attempts on the lives of her three children and her sister Beth.
Her oldest daughter Bridget is the first one to be seriously wounded by her demonic mom.
"Mommy's with the maggots now."
After stabbing Beth through the hand with a piece of glass, Ellie sets her sights on
Bridget and picks a unique weapon — her tattoo gun. A demonic Ellie attacks her daughter
with the gun. She stabs Bridget in the cheek, leaving a nice juicy cut that she immediately
hones in on. Ellie then extends her gnarled bloody tongue and licks her daughter's wound,
infecting her with Deadite blood leading to Bridget's possession.
Early on in Evil Dead Rise, we see Kassie making her staff that's half doll which she names
Staffney. When Ellie asks where the scissors are, the film makes sure to show us that Kassie stashes
them under the couch. This pays off later on when Ellie makes her way back into the apartment
through the air ducts. Once inside, Ellie immediately tries to murder Beth. However, just
as Ellie has Beth right where she wants her, a resourceful Kassie notices the scissors and slides
them to her aunt. Beth then takes the scissors and jams them up into Ellie's face, temporarily
incapacitating her and allowing her to escape. Evil Dead Rise definitely understands its fanbase
and wastes very little time giving the people exactly what they came for. The movie opens in
familiar territory with a frantic POV shot barreling through the forest before soaring
over a majestic lake. Just as the POV reaches Teresa, a girl reading on the dock, it's revealed
that this was nothing but a clever fake-out. The POV we've seen isn't a demonic presence at all,
it's the view from a camera mounted on a drone. The drone is controlled by a guy named Caleb. He
annoys Teresa, a friend of his girlfriend Jessica, who is currently resting up inside the cabin.
Teresa goes back inside to read in peace and to check up on her friend. However,
as she reads her book, a strange-sounding Jessica begins reciting the words from the book aloud as
if she's reading Teresa's mind. As Teresa leans in to check on her, Jessica grabs her friend
and rips her scalp clean off her head. Teresa, bleeding to death, stumbles outside and horrifies
Caleb. Jessica follows and drags Caleb under the water where she decapitates him with his drone.
Jessica then rises out from below the surface as the film's title rises from behind her.
Following Ellie's demonic first episode, Beth and the kids attempt to flee,
making it into the hallway before Ellie gives chase. It's here that Ellie reveals
her possessed form to the rest of the floor's tenants, and goes on a rampage.
This includes jumping on her neighbor Gabe and violently biting his face, eventually ripping
his eyeball out with her teeth. In almost an instant, Ellie makes quick work of Gabe by
ripping his throat out, as well as tearing his two kids apart. She also takes out an elderly tenant
brandishing a shotgun. It's a brutal moment that shows just how quickly Ellie can kill.
During the psychotic attack, Beth and the three kids get back inside
the apartment and barricade the door. With the door temporarily secured,
Beth approaches the peephole and takes a look back out into the hallway outside.
The film truly kicks off when Danny plays both of the vinyl records he's found in the abandoned
bank vault. Both records contain recordings belonging to someone associated with a church
who has translated the Book of the Dead. The words are spoken via the recording, immediately
unleashing the Deadite curse on the apartment complex. It's here that poor Ellie, while heading
into the parking garage, is blasted back into the elevator by some unseen entity. As if the wind
wasn't thoroughly knocked out of her already, the elevator then rockets back up to the 13th floor.
After having one of her piercings forcibly ripped out by the invisible entity,
the elevator itself begins attacking her. A battered Ellie heads back into the apartment
where, in a possessed trance, she begins aggressively cooking eggs on the stove.
"What's up, sis?" After a few back-to-back incidents in the
apartment, Beth and Kassie make a break for the hallway, still littered with the corpses of their
neighbors. They try to enter an apartment that has access to a potential getaway route via the
fire escape. Beth grabs a shotgun from one of the dead residents, which she plans to use to open the
apartment, but is distracted by Ellie. Beth shoots her demonic sister's leg clean off of her body,
but at this point, it's revealed that the rest of the apartment residents are Deadites as well.
"No matter how busy you ever got you always found time for me."
From Danny's elevator vision in The Shining to a recent sequence in M3GAN,
elevators are definitely the last place you want to be in a horror film. Case in point:
the sickening fate that nearly befalls Beth and Kassie when fleeing from the hallway of horrors.
After skewering Ellie in the face with scissors, Beth and Kassie escape out into the hallway.
"Everybody here dies by dawn, Beth."
However, as they look to unlock the door of a potential escape route,
the dead residents suddenly spring back to life, all under the influence of the Deadites. As the
possessed residents taunt them with a chant of "dead by dawn," Beth and Kassie flee to
the malfunctioning elevator. Kassie discovers that what's been keeping the door jammed are
Ellie's keys from earlier, allowing the doors to finally close. Sadly, after hitting the
button for the garage on the lower level, the elevator begins to fill with gallons of blood.
The top of the elevator is attacked by a Deadite monster, causing it to plummet to the floor below.
This leads to a glorious explosion of blood as the elevator collides with the ground floor,
freeing Beth and Kassie in the process. After being attacked by Ellie with the tattoo gun,
Bridget heads into the bathroom to examine her cut, which looks noticeably infected. As she
examines the wound, black veins begin spreading from the cut, followed up by a blood fountain
pouring out of her nose and mouth. Not long after, her fate is clear when Beth sees Bridget perched
on the kitchen counter with her back facing them. When she turns around, Bridget reveals that she is
eating a glass vase, leading to some gnarly shots of the glass cutting her throat from the inside.
She then follows up this sick visual with another one when
she begins slicing up Beth's leg with a cheese grater. Kassie is then forced to
use Staffney when she shoves it through the head of her possessed sister.
After Beth and Kassie enter the elevator of blood, we see the possessed Danny and
Bridget shoving their arms inside Ellie. It's not clear why they're doing this until
we see a page from the Book of the Dead. The page shows a disgusting demonic abomination,
complete with several heads and arms. It explains the multiple sets of arms frantically reaching
into the elevator to grab Beth and Kassie before it crashes down into the parking garage.
Upon arrival in the garage, the duo make a beeline to Ellie's car, desperately trying
to escape this nightmare. Unfortunately, the car gets stuck just as the Deadite monster enters the
garage. It forces them to abandon the car and make a break for the closing door on foot. Just as they
make it through, the creature snatches up Kassie and drags her back into the garage. As she gets a
good look at the creature, Kassie sees that it's a grotesque fusion of Ellie, Danny, and Bridget.
Every Evil Dead movie seems to go completely berserk in its final moments, and this entry
is no exception. After the reveal of Ellie's demonic fusion with her kids,
Kassie is completely at their mercy, even being threatened with a chainsaw.
But Beth rescues Kassie from the monster before grabbing the chainsaw herself. The
victory is short-lived though as Beth trips and falls to the ground. Things look dire for
Beth as the maniacal monster that used to be her family decides to stuff her into a wood chipper.
Thankfully, it's Kassie's turn to rescue Beth, as she manages to switch off the chipper before
her aunt is turned into mulch. Beth recovers the chainsaw and begins graphically slicing
up her possessed family like meat in a deli slicer. She then forces the chunks through
the grinder one-by-one, until all that's left is Ellie. Seeing that the end is near,
Ellie attempts to prey on Beth's emotions once again by assuming a human form. However,
Beth isn't fooled and shoves the chainsaw through Ellie's head.
After the massacre in the hallway, Kassie and Beth barricade themselves in the apartment.
It's at this point that Ellie begins to sing a creepy song. Kassie climbs up on the dresser and
looks through the peephole. Almost as if she can smell her, Ellie immediately turns to the
door and begins talking to Kassie, telling her daughter that she feels better and that
it's safe to let her back into the apartment. Kassie skeptical of the claims simply says,
"You don't look so good, Mom."
However, Kassie still falls victim to the Deadite mind games and begins to unlock the
door. As soon as Kassie opens the deadbolt, Ellie reaches through the door and grabs her.
Fortunately, Beth grabs Kassie and pulls her to safety.