Evil Dead Rise's Wuthering Heights reference, explained
Evil Dead Rise spoilers follow.
Alongside the human skin-bound Necronomicon, the new Evil Dead movie includes another, not quite as deadly, book that pops up early in the prologue.
Lee Cronin's blood-soaked Evil Dead Rise may take place mainly in the big city, but kicks off things in a remote cabin in true Sam Raimi fashion. There, the movie makes unexpected use of an English literary classic, putting a disturbing spin onto a haunting story.
The cold open establishes the gory premise of what lies ahead – though, technically, the main story is told in flashback – with the writer-director fleshing out his cinematic creature in blood, cracking bones and a few Easter eggs. Together with a scalp-ripping scene you won't be able to unsee, Cronin's prologue gives fans an insight into the movie's emotional core with a little help from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.
To explore the surprising link between a Deadite-filled film and a Yorkshire family feud from more than two centuries ago, we'll need to enter spoiler territory. They're only minor details, but you may want to look elsewhere if you're yet to see Evil Dead Rise in all its gag-inducing glory.
(We urge you to run, not walk, to the cinema if you haven't.)
In the first few scenes, the frantic camerawork introduces Teresa (Mirabai Pease) as she's intent on enjoying her lake getaway with a good book. Her solo time with Brontë's spellbinding novel is interrupted by Caleb (Richard Crouchley), who informs her that his girlfriend, Teresa's cousin Jessica (Anna-Maree Thomas), is not faring well.
While the obnoxious Caleb couldn't give a damn about Jessica, Teresa takes it upon herself to go check on her, her copy of Wuthering Heights firmly in hand. Her cousin is "sleeping off whatever is wrong with her," as Caleb kindly puts it, with Teresa watching on her and reading Brontë, who's about to provide an unexpected layer to the story.
Teresa is only three chapters in, and we don't blame her for taking her time given she's being constantly interrupted. When she finally thinks she could get some peace and quiet, Jessica commences reciting a passage word by word in an increasingly frightful voice. A Brontë stan? Not quite.
Deadites are known for being playful vehicles of death and, sure, whatever malevolent force is inhabiting Jessica's body may just be looking to put a halt to Teresa's leisurely reading, possibly for good. But there could be more.
Knowing that a demon-unleashing volume can appear at any minute, you'll be forgiven for not paying much attention to this other book. However, as Dave Garbett's camera lingers on the page and an uneasy Teresa pleads with her possessed cousin to shut up, we realise nothing is left to chance in Cronin's excellent movie.
First published in 1847 under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell, the Gothic-infused Wuthering Heights chronicles the soul-ripping bond between wealthy Catherine Earnshaw and foundling-turned-gentleman Heathcliff. Growing up, they develop a sibling-like friendship that's prevented from blossoming into something more due to the Earnshaws' concerns over the young man's lowly origins.
It would be a disservice to Brontë's work to reduce Wuthering Heights to a mere love affair as the book explores the most pervasive aspects of abusive relationships. The story features several toxic male figures, with Heathcliff himself displaying violence and manipulation towards Catherine and his wife Isabella.
But the novel is also peppered with supernatural occurrences from the start, and that's where a link with Evil Dead Rise comes into play.
Teresa wasn't reading just any passage. The movie's opening borrows from the novel's intro where, thirty years after the main events, Heathcliff's tenant Mr Lockwood has a nightmare after reading Catherine's diary.
He dreams of a ghostly Catherine, who died years before, begging him to let her into her former room. Later on, readers find out that Heathcliff demanded Catherine's spirit to haunt him for as long as he lives, going as far as digging up her grave in an obsessive fit.
Back to Lockwood, he's left traumatised by the encounter with a child-faced Catherine who clings onto his arm and wails to be invited in. Blood spills and glass shatters until Lockwood's very realistic nightmare is interrupted by Heathcliff, well aware that Catherine's ghost may not just be a figment of his tenant's dream.
Similarly to Catherine, Jessica – whose face isn't yet shown to the audience – yowls in a melancholic, childlike voice, which slowly turns demonic. The excerpt is terrifying enough as it is, but when a Deadite asks you to let them in, those three words take on an extremely dreadful meaning.
Cronin breathes new life (or should we say death) into one of the scariest moments of Wuthering Heights, bending Brontë's narrative to the rules of the undead. But, much like Lockwood realising the profound connection between Catherine and Heathcliff that night, the filmmaker also lets the audience in on the heart of the movie.
The movie obviously adopts a different tone than the gloomy, sorrowful one Brontë masters in her novel, but packs a heartbreaking punch nonetheless among the groovy bloodshed.
The Evil Dead franchise has always dealt with dysfunctional family dynamics in some regards. Not just Ash and his sister Cheryl in The Evil Dead or siblings David and Mia in Fede Álvarez's grisly 2013 remake, but also Teresa and Jessica and, even more so, estranged sisters Beth (Lily Sullivan) and Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), the real protagonists of Evil Dead Rise.
The loving, if conflicted, relationship between the two women takes up much of the first act, once the prologue at the cabin is revealed to take place after their LA family reunion. Learning about Ellie and Beth's differences may feel like a dragging intro to some, but its slow-burning impact pays off.
Witnessing the two sisters' bond being patched up amplifies the horrifying magnitude of what happens once the Naturom Demonto does its devilish job. By way of a roaring chainsaw, Beth is called to make unspeakable choices, and you can bet this new heroine will be haunted by the consequences forever.
Evil Dead Rise is out now in cinemas.
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