Evil Dead Rise is now streaming on Netflix UK, and oh God, I hope you’re prepared to be scarred for life. From people getting their tongue cut oopen, to sequences of victims eating glass, getting scalped, and having a cheese grater used on them as a weapon, the fifth instalment in the Evil Dead franchise isn’t for the faint of heart.
Evil Dead Rise, which was released theatrically in April, follows a single mother, her children, and her estranged sister as they try to fight for survival after the apartment is overrun by Deadites — which, in case you didn’t know, are parasitic demonic spirits.
The horror movie franchise has never been light on the gore, but this new movie took things further than ever, with Jessica Cullen writing in her Evil Dead Rise review that “the nasty visuals are pretty relentless, forcing the audience to witness extreme moments of I’m-looking-away-from-the-screen-using-my-peripheral-vision cringe.” In fact, Evil Dead Rise is so horrifying, critics are joining us touting it as one of the best movies in the horror genre this year.
The Independent‘s Clarisse Loughrey notes that the film “provides blood by the bucketful without ever crossing the line into outright cruelty.” At the same time, the Irish Times‘ Donald Clarke sums it up as “rip-roaring entertainment that captures the tone of the first two classics while finding new veins to messily drain.”
But how did this bloody gore-fest come to life? In an interview with Variety, Evil Dead Rise’s director, Lee Cronin, revealed the origins of that cheese grater scene.
“It was necessity,” he explained. “It was the hunt for something different. I wrote this movie right at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, so I was locked in my apartment writing this script on my bed with an evil force outside my door, a.k.a. Covid-19. Being trapped in that space gave me a lot of time to look around at things. I always wanted there to be a fight in a kitchen.”
“Being Irish, the kitchen is the heart of the home. It’s where people congregate. I knew I wanted this domestic showdown in that kitchen and thought about the different things that could be used there. It was just one of those moments where I thought, ‘I don’t think I’ve seen anybody use a cheese grater before, or certainly not in a horror context.’”
He added, “Once I landed on it, it’s like our version of the dancing M3GAN. This is the Evil Dead Rise thing, the damn cheese grater.”
To see the damn cheese grater for yourself, you can stream what’s bound to be one of the best Netflix horror movies on the streaming service now. Or, if you aren’t quite ready for all that blood and guts, check out our guide to everything else new on Netflix this month. If you’d like to hear about something lighter, we have guides on The Marvels and Wednesday season 2.