Like the previous movies in theEvil Deadfranchise,Evil Dead Risehas generous amounts of blood – or perhaps a bit too generous, as it has one scene that went above and beyond with blood. A decade after Fede Álvarez’s reimagining simply titledEvil Dead, the franchise was brought back to life with a new installment, unrelated to Alvarez’s movie and Sam Raimi’s trilogy. Directed by Lee Cronin,Evil Dead Riseleft Ash Williams behind and introduced a new version of the Necronomicon and new main characters who had to fight against the evil force unleashed by it.
Evil Dead Risefollowed Beth (Lily Sullivan), who arrived at her estranged sister Ellie’s (Alyssa Sutherland) home. Moments later, an earthquake uncovered a secret chamber underneath the building’s parking lot, and Ellie’s son, Danny, took home some phonograph records and a mysterious book he found there. However, Danny unknowingly unleashed an evil force that first possessed his mom, turning her into a Deadite. What followed was a night of pure horror and lots of blood, especially in the third act of the movie.
Evil Dead Risedidn’t hold back when it came to graphic and terrifying scenes once Ellie became a Deadite, but the third act was notoriously bloody. The only survivors, Beth and Ellie’s youngest daughter Kassie, found a chance to escape the building, which, by then, was plagued with Deadites.Beth and Kassie took refuge in the elevator, but the evil force did its thing and filled the elevator with blood, causing it to plummet to the ground floor. Beth and Kassie fled into the parking lot, where the Marauder caught up with them.
The Marauder is a monstrous creature made of the undead bodies of Ellie, her teenage children Bridget and Danny, and their neighbors.
To destroy the Marauder and get rid of the Deadites, Beth and Kassie forced it into a wood chipper, a scene that also required generous amounts of blood. The amount of fake blood thatEvil Dead Riseused was such that, according to Cronin, they had to hire an industrial kitchen to make all the blood they needed.Cronin also revealedthatEvil Dead Riseused over 1,700 gallons of fake blood, of which most was used in the elevator scene– and yet, it’s not the most fake blood used intheEvil Deadfranchise.
While some horror movies opt for not showing a single drop of blood, others like to push the limits of what the audience might tolerate in terms of showing blood on the screen. Most of theEvil Deadmovies fall into the latter category, starting with Sam Raimi’sThe Evil Dead, the movie that kicked off the franchise.Ash Williams’ firstEvil Deadmovie reportedly used approximately 300 gallons of fake blood(viaSquib FX), and thoughEvil Dead IIalso required fake blood, it’s unknown how much was used in it, as well as inArmy of Darkness.
Evil Dead(2013) stood out for the unbelievable amount of fake blood it used, mostly in the blood rain scene in the third act.
In 2013, two decades afterArmy of Darkness, theEvil Deadfranchise was revived with Fede Álvarez’s re-imagining, simply titledEvil Dead. This was the first movie in the series to not have Ash Williams as its main character, though he made a quick appearance in a post-credits scene, though it’s unrelated to the movie’s story. Aside from Ash’s absence,Evil Deadstood out for the unbelievable amount of fake blood it used, mostly in the blood rain scene in the third act.
Álvarez revealed toBloody Disgustingback in 2013 that justfor the rain blood scene,Evil Deadused 50,000 gallons of fake blood– and given that other scenes also required blood, that number is surely higher.Evil Dead Riseisn’t theEvil Deadmovie that used the most fake blood, but it’s definitely one of the bloodiest.
The above-mentioned elevator scene inEvil Dead Riseis a clear homage to Stanley Kubrick’sThe Shining, which has a similar scene. Of course,a lot of the fake blood made forEvil Dead Risewas used in the elevator scene, which, according to some sources,required around 6000 liters (approximately 1585 gallons)(viaThe Spinoff). To make that part of the movie more impressive, Cronin revealed toTHR(viaCBR) that the elevator scene was achieved in one take, so they didn’t have to worry about cleaning up and shooting it again.
The Shining’s elevator scene, on the other hand, while it might look a lot more intense than the one inEvil Dead Rise, it might have used less fake blood. According to different sources,Kubrick used around 200-300 gallons of fake blood for the elevator scene inThe Shining(viaFilm School Rejects), though, given how big of a perfectionist he was and how many times he shot a single scene, that number might be higher.
Sources:Squib FX,Bloody Disgusting,The Spinoff,THR,Film School Rejects.
Evil Dead Rise
The Evil Dead franchise continues with Evil Dead Rise, a dark fantasy/horror film written and directed by Lee Cronin. This fifth entry in the Evil Dead named series follows two sisters, played by Alyssa Sutherland and Lily Sullivan, as they try to survive a demonic assault from a Deadite. Beth (Sullivan) heads on a road trip to visit her sister Ellie (Sutherland) and her children. However, when the Necronomicon is discovered in Ellie’s L.A. apartment building, the Deadites rise back from their demonic realm and begin to bring hell back to earth once again. Evil Dead Rise, initially an HBO Max streaming exclusive, instead arrived in theaters on August 15, 2025.
