After becoming a horror phenomenon all the way back in 1981, the Evil Dead franchise continues to live on. The latest film in the franchise, Evil Dead Rise, is set to come out at some point in 2022 and won’t be featuring Bruce Campbell as the iconic Ash Williams. It will mark the second time that Campbell isn’t starring in a film or TV series that is Evil Dead related.
However, fans of the franchise should rest easy knowing that much of the creative team from the original film will be involved. Campbell, Sam Raimi, and Rob Tapert are all on board as producers. Campbell had a chance to talk about the upcoming sequel and had some interesting insights.
“This one’s dark, this one’s pretty serious. Good, strong performances,” Campbell told BlairWitch.De. “It’s a single mom who now has to deal with this book. These days it’s more about the book. That book gets around, that book is handed around, passed along, people try and get rid of it, they try to bury it or destroy it and they really can’t. So this book just keeps popping up, so really it’s just another story of what happens if this book appears in this particular group of people’s lives and how it intersects.”
It appears that the film will stray away from the cabin in the woods angle that was prominent in every Evil Dead story. The director of the critically acclaimed horror film The Hole in the Ground Lee Cronin is taking over the franchise and Campbell had some thoughts on how Cronin is as a filmmaker.
“Lee Cronin is a very serious man, he’s a very serious director,” Campbell added. “Sam Raimi picked him because he did a pretty good job on a movie The Hole in the Ground. He’s a very atmospheric director and Sam thought, ‘Let’s give this guy a shot.’ It’s gonna be really good, we’ve seen a rough [cut] of it already and it has all the components we need. Like anything, when you see a rough version it just has to be tightened, but we’re good. We’re in good shape.”
Cronin’s work on The Hole in the Ground was vastly different than the style that fans have grown accustomed to in previous Evil Dead stories. The film is moody, serious, and not overly stylistic. It’ll be interesting to see if Cronin will adapt his style to mimic Raimi’s or if he’ll adapt Evil Dead to be more in line with his style.