Evil Dead Rise Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

2. Lee Cronin's Tight Direction

Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin was certainly an inspired choice to helm this movie, after his directorial debut The Hole in the Ground made quite the splash at Sundance in 2019.

Cronin proved with that film he had a real knack for mood and a keen eye for compellingly haunting imagery, both of which serve him extremely well on this movie.

Aided by skilled cinematographer Dave Garbett - who also shot many episodes of Ash vs. Evil Dead - Cronin makes the absolute most of his film's limited location, emphasising the characters' confinement with tight, claustrophobic camerawork and shallow depths of field.

Cronin does just enough to homage the series' stylistic tropes - like the infamous demon POV shot - but also brings plenty of his own aesthetic sensibilities to the fore.

A standout sequence shot entirely through the apartment's peephole, for instance, is one of the most artful scenes in the entire franchise.

Combine this with a canny mix of practical and digital gore, as well as Cronin's clear aptitude working with actors, and Evil Dead Rise should help establish him as a heavily in-demand genre filmmaker.