'Evil Dead' (2013) vs. 'Evil Dead Rise' (2023): Which Film Is Gorier?

Oct 16, 2023

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The following contains major spoilers for Evil Dead (2013) and Evil Dead Rise (2023).

Of the many horror franchises, few are as creatively violent as The Evil Dead. Sam Raimi's 1981 original garnered an NC-17 rating for "substantial horror violence and gore" and Stephen King described the low-budget indie as "the most ferociously original horror film of the year." The film follows Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), his sister, and three friends as they travel to a cabin in the remote woods and accidentally summon demons with an incantation from the Book of the Dead.

In 2013, Fede Alvarez directed the fourth franchise installation, Evil Dead, a remake/sequel following Mia (Jane Levy), her brother, and three friends in a similarly doomed cabin. Ten years later, the Deadites have returned to the big screen with Lee Cronin's Evil Dead Rise which tells a stand-alone story about a similar Book of the Dead. Found in the basement of an L.A. high rise, an accidental invocation unleashes demons who set their sights on Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and her three children.

Both films live up to the bloody expectations of the original with extreme gore and upsetting violence, but which is more brutal? To decide, we’ve lined up a series of head to head battles to help us hail to the gory king of this legendary franchise's second chapter.

‘Evil Dead’ (2013)

Both films kick off with particularly violent introductions. Evil Dead begins with a teenage girl wandering the wilderness, begging for help. Jumped from behind, she finds herself bound in a cabin while her father accuses her of killing her mother. As the local townsfolk watch, she transforms into a Deadite and he drops a match in front of her feet. The poor man watches in horror as the flames consume his daughter, still yelling obscenities, then shoots her with a shotgun.

Evil Dead Rise begins on the dock of a placid lake. Jessica (Anna-Maree Thomas) has taken her boyfriend and friend on this weekend getaway, but seems to have come down with a mysterious illness. When her friend goes to check on her, Jessica yanks on the poor girl's braid and rips the skin off of her skull. She drags the bloody scalp out to the dock then decapitates her boyfriend with the rough blades of a drone before raising above the water along with the ominous title card.

Winner: Evil Dead Rise

The opening battle goes to the new kid. Teresa (Mirabai Pease) stumbling onto the dock minus her skin is horrifying and there's a sick kind of gratification in seeing these annoying characters brutally dispatched. We’re also giving extra bonus points to Checkov's Drone Blades.

‘Evil Dead Rise’

The original The Evil Dead contains one of the most infamous scenes in all of horror. The first to become possessed, Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) wanders into the dark woods and is sexually assaulted by twigs and tree branches moving under their own power. Both remakes attempt to recreate this shocking effect, one more faithfully than the other. After crashing her car in a creek, Mia crawls to dry land only to be grabbed by tree roots and vines. They choke her and wrap themselves around her arms and legs while a slimy black root slithers up her leg. We don't want to think about what happens next.

Set in a high rise apartment building, Evil Dead Rise includes a creative update of this upsetting scene. After an earthquake, Ellie takes the elevator down to the lobby only to find it dropping in free fall from the thirteenth story. After slamming to the ground, cords from the demolished elevator shaft slowly encircle her appendages and lift her off the ground. They twist and contort her body allowing the demons to enter her.

Winner: Evil Dead Rise

Again, the updated version takes the prize. Not only is this scene an ingenious use of the urban setting, Ellie's final position looks incredibly painful. Plus we’re excited to finally see a version of this scene that doesn't include implied penetration.

‘Evil Dead Rise’

It's perhaps not shocking that neither Mia nor Ellie react well to becoming possessed. They return to their friends and family injured and acting decidedly strange. Mia asks to leave and tells her friends about a monster in the woods, but Ellie begins aggressively cooking eggs then appears to die. Confused and hoping to revive her, Ellie's sister Beth (Lily Sullivan) and her children prepare an ice bath which only seems to antagonize the demon residing in her body. She flies up to the ceiling and unleashes a powerful scream before collapsing into the now boiling bathtub.

Because Mia is currently suffering from heroin withdrawal, her friends Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci) don't want her to leave the cabin. Frustrated and terrified, she retreats to the bathroom and takes what will hopefully be a calming shower. Unfortunately, the demon possessing her turns the water temperature as high as it will go. Her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) comes to check on her and finds the skin on her face bubbling and scalding under the steaming hot water.

Winner: Evil Dead

This battle definitely goes to Mia. Ellie's quip "Mommy's with the maggots now" probably causes more harm than the bubbling water she falls into. Contrast that with the ultra painful sight of the skin on Mia's face blistering with third degree burns and we’ve got a clear winner.

‘Evil Dead’ (2013)

As if the possessions of Mia and Ellie aren't horrifying enough, both women spread the sinister evil in the most disgusting way possible. After taking a sedative to soothe her burns, Mia returns in full Deadite mode and shoots her brother in the shoulder with a shotgun. She opens her mouth and lets out a scream that seems to channel the rage of hell before tackling Olivia and puking in her face. Ellie has already spread the evil to her daughter Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) leading to her horrific death (more on that later) and her brother Danny (Morgan Davies) has wrapped her body in sheets to keep it from reanimating. While his back is turned in the kitchen, her ghostly form levitates behind him and stabs him with a nearby butcher knife before spewing vomit onto him through the sheet that still covers her face.

Winner: Evil Dead Rise

Though it's the closest contest yet, we’re giving the edge to Bridget and Danny. The emotional horror of having puke reign down on you minutes after watching a sibling die compounded with the pain of getting attacked with a carving knife would be unimaginable. Adding insult to injury, puke definitely gets in those stab wounds. Even if Danny weren't about to become a Deadite, he would surely need an aggressive disinfectant.

‘Evil Dead’ (2013)

Though neither film has shied away from violence in their opening acts, two different shards of glass kick the gore into high gear. After shattering the bathroom mirror with her terrifying scream, Ellie advances on her sister with a long piece of broken glass. Attempting to stab her sister in the face, Beth defends herself and the jagged shard rips straight through the palm of her hand. Though painful and shocking, this wound is nothing compared to what happens in Mia's cabin. Olivia retreats to the bathroom to wash off Mia's vomit and begins to feel the effects of the possession. When Eric checks on her a short time later, he finds a fully possessed Olivia hacking into her check with a piece of sharp glass. She's opened a giant wound from her mouth to her ear.

Winner: Evil Dead

We don't want to discount the emotional pain Beth no doubt feels when her sister tries to kill her, but Olivia's glass is the clear winner. Not only is it incredibly gruesome, but it precedes some of the most horrifying violence of the film.

‘Evil Dead Rise’

Olivia's horrifying face wound is merely a precursor to one of the franchise's most brutal scenes. As Eric stumbles away in horror, he slips in his friend's blood and slams his back onto the edge of the toilet. Olivia approaches and stabs him over and over again in the face with a syringe. Bridget suffers a similar wound when her mother, a tattoo artist, takes her buzzing needle and scratches a black line down her cheek. This seems to spread the possession and a later scene shows black ink pouring from Bridget's mouth, nose, and eyes.

Winner: Evil Dead

We’re sure it's horrifying to be attacked by your own mother and were Bridget to survive, she would have a black line on her face to remind her of this trauma for the rest of her life. However, this pales in comparison to the pain and terror of being stabbed in the face multiple times with a syringe. Not only does Eric then have to pulverize Olivia's head with a piece of a broken toilet, but the sight of him slowly pulling the needle out of his lower eyelid will haunt us for the rest of our lives.

‘Evil Dead’ (2013)

One of the enduring images from Fede Alvarez's Evil Dead is Deadite Mia slicing into her tongue with a box cutter. Having been trapped in the basement, she lures her brother's girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) to the trap door and pulls her down the cellar stairs. Spewing obscenities, Mia crawls on top of her and bites the flesh between her thumb and forefinger. Natalie attempts to defend herself with a box cutter, but Mia proves the tiny weapon is no threat. She stops licking Natalie's leg and runs her tongue over the blade of the box cutter, splitting the tender flesh in two. Ellie suffers a similar wound though hers is not self-inflicted. While trying to strangle her sister, youngest daughter Kassie (Nell Fisher) slides a large pair of sewing scissors across the floor to her dying aunt. Beth stabs her sister in the face, driving one of the blades into Ellie's nose. The Deadite's face falls with the black handles protruding from the wound.

Winner: Evil Dead

Nothing can compare with the sight of Mia slowly splitting her own tongue with an evil smile. As if this weren't bad enough, she then kisses Natalie and tries to shove her bleeding tongue into the poor girl's mouth.

‘Evil Dead’ (2013)

This marquee battle epitomizes the disturbing violence of the franchise's later installments. Both use innocent kitchen gadgets as horrifying weapons and both occur amidst incredibly upsetting and emotional scenes. Realizing that Bridget has been in the kitchen for a while, Beth goes to check on her injured niece and finds a fully converted Deadite. Bridget is chowing down on glass and we watch as the shards nearly poke through the skin of her neck from the inside. She turns to attack Beth and the two use whatever they can find in the brutal battle. Bridget grabs a box grater and digs it into the back of Beth's lower leg, slicing off a million tiny pieces of flesh in the process. Chasing after her aunt, Bridget runs straight into her younger sister's homemade weapon. "Staphne" is a doll head attached to a walking stick with a broken and jagged edge. Designed to be more of a scarecrow, the pointed end penetrates Bridget's mouth and drives itself all the way through and out the back of her head.

After Natalie escapes from Mia's basement kiss, she attempts to wash off the wound from her would-be sister-in-law's bite. As she squeezes black goo from the tooth marks in her hand, an infection begins to spread up her arm. Hoping to stop the possession in its tracks, Natalie takes a carving knife and begins to cut off her arm. As if the blood spurting into her face weren't bad enough, Natalie doesn't quite finish the job. David and Eric find her cradling her arm as the remaining flesh slowly tears apart and the amputated limb drops to the floor.

Winner: Evil Dead

We have to be honest, given the amount of attention this cheese grater scene has attracted, we were expecting a little more carnage. While the idea of being attacked by the same tool that gives us shredded cheese is truly horrifying, Natalie's arm slowly ripping itself in two takes the title.

‘Evil Dead Rise’

Both films include brutal set pieces in which a Deadite takes on a large number of friends and family. Midway through the film, Beth and the children barricade the apartment door against Ellie who roams the hall and calls to her children through the peephole. Filmed with a circular lens, what follows is one of the most shocking and darkly humorous segments of the film. We watch through the tiny peephole as Ellie lays waste to her neighbors, tossing children through the air, ripping out eyeballs with her teeth, and tearing out the throat of the man who tried to save her life just hours ago.

After cutting off her arm, Natalie goes full Deadite and emerges from the kitchen wielding a nail gun with her remaining arm. She shoots herself several times in the face before peppering Eric and David with nails. The men then have the unpleasant task of pulling nails out of their bodies with Eric in particular prying apart his arm and his chest, now nailed together. But the carnage is just beginning. Natalie viciously beats her boyfriend with a crowbar until Eric shoots her with the nailgun. With metal studs protruding from her face, she advances on Eric and splits his hand in two with the crowbar as he tries to protect himself from her blows. Poised to pulverize his head, David shoots her remaining hand off with the shotgun. She seemingly reeverts to her human persona before dying and allowing the audience to finally catch its breath.

Winner: Evil Dead

We’ve got to give points to Cronin for the grisly fun of its hallway sequence, but Alvarez takes the win by putting us in the middle of the action. We also have to shout out poor Eric who has been absolutely brutalized throughout the course of this film and keeps returning to save his friends.

‘Evil Dead’ (2013)

If there's one thing we expect from an Evil Dead film, it's buckets of blood and the two latest franchise installments do not disappoint. Finally escaping the apartment, Beth and Kassie make it to the elevator, but notice the switchboard filling with blood as they descend to the lobby. The elevator car fills to the top with the sticky red substance, fully submerging the two in blood. Moments before they both drown, the elevator doors open and spilling hundreds of gallons of blood along with Beth and Kassie who ride the wave halfway down the hall. In the final act of Evil Dead, Mia has been freed from possession and she watches her brother set fire to the cabin with himself inside. She holds out her hand and catches a single drop of blood falling from the sky, a precursor to the incoming deluge. Blood rains from above drenching everything in its path throughout the film's final scene.

Winner: Evil Dead

Cronin has described going through 1,717 of blood during production, so much so that they hired an industrial kitchen to create it. While this is impressive, Alvarez's Evil Dead used an estimated 50,000 gallons of fake blood during the film's grisly climax and still holds the record for the largest amount of the sticky substance used in a single scene.

‘Evil Dead Rise’

Aside from Bruce Campbell himself, The Evil Dead's most iconic image is arguably the chainsaw. Original hero Ash first picks up the power tool in the original film and it has since become his signature weapon. Cronin and Alvarez both include chainsaws in their climaxes, but Cronin ups the ante by throwing in a wood-chipper as well. Having finally made it to the parking garage, Kassie and Beth team up to defeat the mutant Deadite monster once and for all. Beth uses a chainsaw to drive the monster into the mouth of the chipper, then cuts into her sister's head as the humanoid creature is slowly dragged into the large metal teeth. With nothing but Ellie's face remaining, Beth kicks her still quipping head into the grinder, finally admitting that her sister is gone for good.

As blood rains from the sky, Mia watches a hideous demon crawl its way up through the blood-soaked ground. With no hope of escape, she hides underneath her brother's jeep and uses the chainsaw to cut the legs of the demon who then flips the vehicle on its side and pins her to the earth by her hand. With the chainsaw just out of reach and the demon advancing, Mia rips off her trapped hand as the blood rains down from the sky. With her one remaining hand, she jams the chainsaw into the demon's face and nearly splits its entire body in two. The defeated demon slowly sinks into the bloody ground and presumably back to hell.

Winner: Evil Dead

The addition of a wood chipper definitely adds to the gore, but the image of Mia standing in a torrent of bright red blood jamming a chainsaw through the face of a monster will definitely be remembered as one of the most brutal and exciting images in the history of horror.

For those keeping track, the final count is Evil Dead Rise: 3 to Evil Dead: 8. However, what this list really proves is that horror buffs and gore hounds alike will surely be shocked, thrilled, horrified, and delighted with both Alvarez's and Cronin's entries in this ferocious franchise.

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Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the "franchise" has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is "The Amityville IP."

The found footage entries in the Amityville series have been hit and miss. The Amityville Haunting featured a few innovative uses of the format, but the minuscule budget and bad acting hampered its potential. Amityville: Vanishing Point was unable to screen in Canada, though it, too, looked very cheap. The seventeenth film in the "franchise," Amityville: No Escape, adopts two different strategies for its use of found footage.

Co-written by actor Ira Gansler (he plays the Woodsman), as well as director Henrique Couto, the film opens with cards explaining how the content of the film came to be. The video was cut by the District Attorney's Office in Suffolk County to "contextualize the inauspicious events that took place on April 15th, 1997 and August 28th, 2016."

Right away, it's clear that the film is adopting a dual timeline approach for its storytelling. Normally this would hint to audiences that the timelines will meet, merge, or comment on one another. Sadly, neither Gansler nor Couto make much effort to pay this off, aside from the final "twist" scene of the film, which is underwhelming and verges on nonsensical.

As a result, Amityville: No Escape is the equivalent of two different short films that have been cut together to make a feature.

In the first, a young woman Lina (Julia Gomez) moves in the Amityville house. It's a familiar story: she and her (never seen) husband bought the house for cheap, completely unaware of its history. The husband has recently been deployed, so the camcorder footage acts like video diaries that Lina is filming for his return. That means these portions of the film mostly feature Lina sitting on the bed or at the kitchen table, speaking directly to the camera or, alternatively, POV sequences as she explores the property.

Naturally as the film progresses, Linda begins to experience strange events. The camera frequently turns itself on while she's sleeping, dark shadows fall across the bed, objects move by themselves and loud noises startle her. It's standard issue horror movie/found footage content, but it works because Gomez is a good actress who sells not just the character's reactions to the spooky stuff, but also her isolation, exhaustion, and paranoia.

Take, for example, the morning after Lina was scared in the night by a thudding noise. She confesses to the camera how embarrassed she was about being seen in her pyjamas by all of the neighbours after calling the police, who, of course, discovered nothing. There's something incredibly empathetic about Lina's desperation not just for her husband to come home, but also be believed. The way she repeats "I miss you" throughout the tapes is heartbreaking.

If there's one frustrating element about this portion of the film, it's the abruptness of the ending. Naturally Lina's story comes to a head on April 15th, as the card foretold, but there isn't enough rising action or enough of an opportunity for Gomez to go for broke with the hauntings. Lina's story is sad, but the finale needed something punchier.

Still, it's light years better than the other half of the film.

Student George Harris (Josh Miller) is making a documentary for his thesis on "fear" (that's it – that's the topic) so he recruits his friend Simon (Michael William Ralston), his girlfriend Sarah (Joni Durian), his sister Elizabeth (Allison Egan), and Simon's friend Lisa Sheets (Alia Gabrielle Eckhardt) to camp in the woods behind the Amityville house. There they’ll talk about their fears on camera and…other stuff? (The inciting incident for this group is pretty undercooked).

If the Lina portion of the film is indebted to Paranormal Activity, then this portion is a sad imitation of The Blair Witch Project. Couto's direction inside the house is fine, because it's contained and understated. For these outside sequences, however, there's no sense of scope or atmosphere. The group of College kids are clearly spending the film in a field next to a small patch of trees, so the suggestion that the group has gotten lost walking for 1.5 hours in the last act is thoroughly unbelievable.

The issues don't stop there: the acting is bad, the dialogue and characterizations are weak, the editing, particularly the scares when the group encounters a threatening Little Girl (Katrina Gansler) is choppy, and the narrative beats are underdeveloped.

Overall, at least half of Amityville: No Escape is worth recommending, if only to watch how Gomez makes a completely isolated performance into something compelling. Unfortunately the constant cross-cutting to the other storyline, which doesn't work at all, zaps the film of most of its energy. It's a disappointing mixed bag.

The Amityville IP Awards:

Next Time: We’re tackling the second of Dustin Ferguson's three entries, 2020's Amityville Clownhouse (originally released in 2017 as Amityville: Evil Never Dies), which is apparently a sequel to The Amityville Toybox.