Evil Deadis a long-running franchise with not a lot of movies despite it existed for decades.The Evil Deadpremiered in 1981 and would be followed up by two movie sequels directed by the creator, Sam Raimi. The series was rebooted in 2013, got a non-related show after that in 2015, and now another reboot is here viaEvil Dead Rise.
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Also, video games and comics appeared sporadically throughout the decades. It should come as no surprise then thatEvil Dead Riseis filled with Easter Eggs. Some are hard to spot while others are pretty obvious for fans of the series.
There will be spoilers in this hunt for them.
8The Opening
There are a lot of callbacks to the series in the opening ten minutes ofEvil Dead Rise. There is the tracking shot that follows the credits up until it stops at the lake with Teresa. There are other weird camera angles throughout the movie that callback to Sam Raimi’s quirks as well.
Then there is the setting of the cabin, which is predominantly how this whole franchise began. The addition of the lake is something new though and felt more like an homage toFriday the 13th, another horror classic series.
7Mind Reading
Teresa is reading a book,Wuthering Heightsby Emily Bronte, by the lake until she gets interrupted by Caleb. This forces her inside and she tries to talk to her cousin, Jessica, who is feeling ill. Jessica remains quiet so Teresa goes back to her book and then something creepy starts to happen.
Jessica rises from the bed and starts reading passages fromWuthering Heightsas if shehas psionic abilities. This might be a callback to the firstEvil Deadwherein one of the possessed girls starts counting cards from a distance.
6Tentacles Are Back
One of the most infamous scenes in the first two movies involves tree tentacles going to town on women. It felt, at the time, like Sam Raimi was afan of animeand a particular adult genre at that. While there are no trees inEvil Dead Rise, the film does pay tribute to the tree bondage.
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When Ellie goes up the elevator from the basement, the whole thing starts to split apart. Wires from the paneling start to wrap around and contort Ellie like some sort of puppet on a string.
5The Old Eyeball In The Mouth Trick
One of the grossest moments in the movie involves the possessed Ellie brutally massacring an entire hallway of apartment dwellers. She bites the eye out of one of the neighbors, spits it out, and then that eye flies into another neighbor’s mouth wherein he chokes on it. This is a direct reference to the second movie.
When trying to close a hatch, a Deadite’s eye pops out and lands in someone’s mouth. The only difference inEvil Dead 2is that she doesn’t choke and die from the eye. Overall, this series has a lot ofeye trauma for the characters.
Having had enough, Beth eventually breaks out of the apartment and takes Kassie with her. In the hallway, Ellie tries to stop them but a quick shotgun blast halts her pursuit. All is not over yet though, as Ellie starts to reanimate the other dead around her.
They start to chant “Dead by dawn!” which is another callback to the second movie. A bunch of Deadites inEvil Dead 2try to play tricks on Ash to make him think there is no hope.Like Ash though, Beth is unwilling to give up the fight.
3Blood Elevator
This next Easter Egg pays homage to anotherhorror classicThe Shining. Once Beth and Kassie get away from Ellie and the other Deadites in the hall, their descent with the elevator is not much better. It starts to fill with blood, almost drowning them.
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The blood is sort of like a godsend though because it decreases the impact when the elevator crashes. The wave of blood that erupts from this elevator has to be a reference toThe Shiningwhich also has a blood elevator scene. Another movie,Ready Player One, also has a direct callback to this blood elevator in it.
2The Weapons
There are two prominent weapons from the franchise that show up inEvil Dead Rise. First, Mr. Fonda makes a reference to owning a shotgun which is the one gun known to appear in every movie. That weapon makes an appearance later when Beth acts like a badass and starts blowing off limbs in the hall.
Then, in the parking garage, Beth gets ahold of a chainsaw like somesort of Chainsaw Woman. She doesn’t have to lose an arm either to wield it like Ash inEvil Dead 2. That would have perhaps gone too far on the homage train.
1The Woodchipper
Finally, there is another shoutout to a non-Evil Deadmovie in the parking garage. The truck that Beth gets the chainsaw from also has a wood chipper attached to it. Beth and Kassie use it to defeat the weird Legion-like version of Ellie at the end of the movie.
Fargois a mystery comedy-drama that has a wood-chipper scene in it too. It is an infamous scene in the film and even those that have never seenFargostill probably know about it. It’s been parodied and referenced in too many things to count since the 90s.
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