6,500 liters of fake blood drench horror film 'Evil Dead Rise'
If you’re not a fan of gore in horror films…well, maybe "Evil Dead Rise" isn’t the movie for you.
The latest installment of the long-running "Evil Dead" franchise is perhaps the bloodiest of them all — and if you’ve seen the other films in the series, you know that’s saying something.
The original "Evil Dead" hit theaters back in 1981, launching the careers of director Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell and eventually becoming a beloved cult classic. "Evil Dead Rise" is the fifth film in the series, and was written and directed by Lee Cronin.
"I saw the movies originally on VHS, my dad showed them to me," recalls Cronin. "He showed me ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘Evil Dead 2’ back-to-back when I was about 9 years old."
Early fan reaction to "Evil Dead Rise" has been overwhelmingly positive — with audiences screaming and laughing in equal measure.
"It’s really exciting," says Cronin. "I think American audiences are wonderfully vocal when it comes to horror movies, and I hoped when I was crafting the movie that it would be very much an audience participation movie. And that’s the feedback that I’m getting so far, is that people are having a rip-roaring time in the theater."
And according to stars — including Australian actress Lily Sullivan — it was rip-roaring fun behind-the-scenes, too.
"It was super playful," says Sullivan of shooting with her young co-stars. "We would always have to, like, palate-cleanse an intense scene with laughter. Or, to get into the scene, we’d let out primal screams together, covered in blood head-to-toe and just wide-eyed, and just be like, ‘Let’s go!’ like it was a sport. So, it was really, really fun."
Evil Dead Rise hits theaters nationwide Friday, April 21.