'Evil Dead Rise' needed to rely on 'an industrial kitchen' for all of the movie's fake blood

If you're going to make an Evil Dead movie, then there better be blood — and lots of it! Lee Cronin (The Hole in the Ground) immediately understood this simple fact when the legendary Sam Raimi hand-selected him to direct the next chapter in the splatter-happy Deadite saga: Evil Dead Rise.

"I had to hire an industrial kitchen to create the amount of blood we needed," Cronin revealed during an interview with Empire for the magazine's February 2023 issue (now on sale). There was so much of the red stuff, in fact, that the filmmaker found it necessary to warn the landlord of his rented production abode. "When I was checking out, I had to warn the landlord, 'You're going to find bloody handprints all over the apartment — but they're not real, honest!'"

Raimi executive produced the feature alongside Ash Williams himself, Bruce Campbell. Per Cronin, the franchise OGs made two specific requests when it came to Rise: "Make sure there's a book involved, and make sure there are good Deadites."

Beyond those two groovy ground rules, however, the director was allowed to run wild. To that end, he decided to move "the malevolence away from a cabin in the woods and put it into a domestic setting," which turned out to be a family reunion in Los Angeles. "It straps you onto a rocket that's fueled by blood," he teased. "You can either get off or you can stay on 'til it explodes."

Lily Sullivan (I Met a Girl) and Alyssa Sutherland (Vikings) lead the cast as a pair of estranged sisters, who find themselves in a life-or-death battle against a horde of demons. "What I love about the Evil Dead is that these aren't just mindless zombies. They talk [and] taunt," Cronin said. "There's more Deadite dialogue than ever before."

Morgan Davies (Storm Boy), Gabrielle Echols (Reminiscence), and Nell Fisher (Northspur) co-star. 

John Keville, Macdara Kelleher, Richard Brener, Dave Neustadter, Romel Adam, and Victoria Palmieri serve as executive producers on the hotly-anticipated film alongside Raimi and Campbell. Rob Tapert (Ash vs Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe) is a producer. 

Evil Dead Rise will claw its way onto the big screen Friday, April 21. International audiences get to check it out two days early.

Looking for more horror to make your spine tingle and blood curdle? You can currently catch Jordan Peele's NOPE on Peacock. Plus, don't miss SYFY's hit horror series Chucky, which just wrapped its second season.