The Evil Dead franchise has never been kind to its characters. From sawing off their limbs to gushing blood from every orifice to never actually dying, Sam Raimi's legacy franchise is crude, gory, and a lot of fun (as long as you are an audience member).
Part of that fun comes from Raimi's established guidelines in his shoe-string budget cult horror masterpiece, The Evil Dead. He delivered a practically bloody good time with practical effects and makeup that delivers a level of disgust throughout the trilogy. Fede Álvarez continued this trend in his 2013 Evil Dead by using very little CGI throughout the entire film. Lee Cronin has been rumored to continue the legacy of practical effects in his upcoming Evil Dead Rise, which star Alyssa Sutherland says has "no digital" effects.
At No Film School, we are always excited to see new releases that use practical effects over expensive CGI – especially when it comes to blood. From possessed characters climbing on walls to the ungodly amount of fake movie blood used, this is how Evil Dead Rise carries on Raimi's practical effects legacy.
Creating Wall-Climbing Deadites
What makes Evil Dead demons terrifying is their ability to transform established human characters into something uncanny.
While Raimi had actors wear contact lenses that were painful to apply and blinded actors, Cronin decided to follow Álvarez’s portrayal of Deadites with golden eyes. Cronin uses some CGI to control the contacts in those more terrifying portrayals of the Deadite possessed.
As for the demonic movement of the Deadites, actors have to do a lot of twitching and unnatural movements to scare the life out of their next victims. Like the previous iterations of Deadites, Ellie (Sutherland) worked hard to perfect the twitchy movement of her character.
While Raimi used stop motion to showcase more inhuman movements, like when Linda (Betsy Baker) came back to life to do her dance of the dead, Cronin used stunt doubles. In the glass-shattering scene of Ellie climbing the bathroom wall in Evil Dead Rise, Sutherland told /Films that stunt doubles replaced post-production digital FX.
"That was an incredible stunt double," Sutherland said. "They wouldn't let me [do it]. I wanted to try to do that. But I think they were basically like, 'We don't have the time for you to learn this.' I really wanted to give it a go. The producers were like, 'No, your stunt double's going to do this one because... we don't have the time. She's already got this one nailed."
Alyssa Sutherland as Ellie in 'Evil Dead Rise'Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Buckets on Buckets of Blood
The Evil Dead franchise does not shy away from graphic content. These films are all blood, guts, and gore, which is one of the many reasons we love this horror film.
The Evil Dead did have its limitations with gore as censor boards cut multiple scenes that they deemed too graphic despite Raimi's efforts to change the color of the blood to blue and green so it didn't look like blood. However, when you have liquid exploding from every end of a character, censor boards don't care. However, the blood did look fantastic due to special effects artist Tom Sullivan. He created many of the blood effects, mixing coffee grinds into Raimi's fake blood recipe of clear corn syrup, a full bottle of red food coloring, a few dashes of blue food coloring, and nondairy creamer to give the blood a more visceral texture. For under $25, that blood looked spectacular.
Evil Dead Rise had a bigger budget than Raimi ever did and pushed the blood budget to its limit. Cronin told /Film that Evil Dead Rise uses about 1,717 gallons of expensive movie blood, which had a viscous, soupy mixture and cost about $135 per gallon. This means, Cronin spent about $231,795 on blood. For comparison, the human body holds about 1.5 gallons of blood. The film would have required 1,113 completely drained humans to provide the amount of blood Cronin needed.
"[It's] all proper sticky, icky movie blood. Like the real deal. There's no cheating of taking some water and putting red food coloring in because that will not do,” Cronin told /Film. “This was all cooked. We had to hire an industrial kitchen to make the amount of blood that we needed, and it was everywhere. So yeah, it's the real deal. And it's splattered all over the screen."
No matter the shade or texture, fake blood will always outshine CGI blood. Blood reminds us of the reality we are being presented with. It doesn't matter if this reality is over-the-top in humor or gore like Raimi wants it to be, fake blood grounds this fantasy. Sure, CGI blood has its place in Hollywood, but it has no place in Raimi's Evil Dead franchise.
Lily Sullivan as Beth in 'Evil Dead Rise'Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
