Because they successfully manage to be both scary and funny, all of the Evil Dead movies are incredible cinematic experiences, but as franchise legend Bruce Campbell has said many times, they are much more fun to watch than they are to make. If you’re an actor in one of the films, you are not only run through the ringer emotionally, but also physically; there are always complicated stunts to pull off, not to mention all of the makeup and the gallons and gallons of fake blood. Having made three features as well as the television series Ash vs. Evil Dead, Campbell is certainly an authority on the subject – but do stars Alyssa Sutherland and Lily Sullivan feel the same way following their time making Evil Dead Rise?
As seen in the video above, I had the pleasure of interviewing the two actors earlier this month during the virtual press day for the new horror movie, and the first thing I asked was for their take on whether or not Evil Dead films are fun to make. Speaking from the Deadite perspective, as her character gets possessed relatively early in the runtime, Alyssa Sutherland explained that she had a blast on set, which was partially because she was doing a lot of the scaring instead of being scared. Partially agreeing with Bruce Campbell’s take, she said,
No, it’s not easy, but I had a shit ton of fun. I’m not gonna lie. I had a great time. But it’s so much. I think it’s easier on my side of things, or at least it was for me, to be doing the scaring, and like the character is having fun. So I think it helps that like then I’m going to have to have fun in the scenes. So yeah, I would disagree on half of that. I had a great time.
In Evil Dead Rise, Alyssa Sutherland’s Ellie is a mother of three children who gets possessed by evil forces shortly after her sister, Beth (played by Lily Sullivan) comes to town. With mommy suddenly having the urge to cut open her kids and eat their souls, Beth is thrust into the position of protector – which means a lot of Sullivan running around and screaming while being covered in blood.
There are parallels that can be drawn between the journeys of Lily Sullivan’s Beth and Bruce Campbell’s Ash Williams from the original Evil Dead trilogy – which partially explains why Sullivan was able to connect more deeply with Campbell’s perspective than Alyssa Sutherland during the making of Evil Dead Rise. She told me that the work was grueling, but added that all of the action in the third act made up for everything:
I feel like being a scrappy hero and a rag doll for like majority of the movie and your nervous system being all over the place pretending you’re about to die, fight or flight, it was deeply, deeply exhausting. But then, you know, as soon as you get given a chainsaw, it all just goes away.
I followed up asking about Beth’s big chainsaw moment in the third act of the movie, and Sullivan explained that the finale was essentially a carrot dangling on a stick for her throughout production:
Yeah, I was like, ‘Get me out of this fear state, inactive hero.’ I was like, ‘Where the hell is the hero?! Give me my chainsaw, gimme my boom stick. I wanna slide under a roller door. I wanna be Lara Croft on acid. I want it!’
Continuing, Lily Sullivan explained that writer/director Lee Cronin was able to schedule the production so that scenes were being shot in chronological order (one of the blessings of having one primary setting), so she got to take Beth through hell and back to earn her spectacular hero moments in the end. Said Sullivan,
It was amazing once you got to the last sequence, ’cause we shot in chronological order, so you just felt Beth develop and you’ve got the monster and you’ve got Ellie who’s amazing and possessed, and then by the end you’re like kind of mirroring each other in a crazy way where you almost end up in the full animal, the full primal yourself – like the human is gone and been pushed to the absolute edge. So that was really fun to have that gear shift.
Evil Dead Rise may have been a challenging movie to make, but it all seems like it was worth it in the end – with the film earning widespread critical acclaim and having a terrific opening weekend at the box office. Check out the exciting feature at a cinema near you, and head over to our 2023 Movie Release Calendar to discover all of the big titles heading to the big screen in the coming weeks and months.