LILYSUTHERLAND IS BETH

Who is Beth, and how did Lee Cronin describe her to you?

She’s an antihero to me. She’s definitely a runner, lost in the washing machine of tour life. She lacks that sense of home and doesn’t necessarily find herself there for people. Then she’s thrust into the most intense version of responsibility. I felt so scrappy and useless, in a way, trying to do certain scenes and deeply exhausted. Lee was just like: “That’s Beth. I don’t want you to look like you know how to use any of these weapons. I want the mess.”

How do you view Beth in comparison to Ash?

As soon as you get given an iconic chainsaw, I’m like, “I’m Bruce Campbell, man, I’m Ash.” But Beth is her own character, and I think that is the beauty of how this franchise can move forward as it takes and plucks different people and puts them into this extreme, wicked position.

What was the peak moment of absurdity where you thought, “Yep, this is my job”?

That would have to be when they’re about to drop a ton of blood from a slippery slide. Like, you’re coming out of an elevator, harnessed, and being smacked against the wall. You’re with your crew and the people who built this random slide on the scaffolding to burst out of the elevator doors. Just like, “This is my job, this is reality, and it’s goddamn nuts.” not the hero right away; he’s not necessarily even the lead.”

Similarly, Beth “picks up the chainsaw and wears that mantle” but isn’t an action hero and doesn’t even know how to use a gun. “Even when she fires a gun, it throws her off balance,” the director notes. “All of those things add to making her feel real… but I never thought about trying to replace Ash; I just thought about her as somebody new with a certain pressure on her shoulders.”

Along with all that pressure, Beth ends up with a lot of blood on her shoulders. Production used 6,500 liters of movie blood (about 1,717 gallons), which required opening an industrial kitchen to cook up the sticky stuff. Expectedly, Cronin also conjures some incredibly gross-out gore moments.

Perhaps two that will be debated as favorites involve a dislodged eyeball and open mouth and the use of a cheese grater. The eyeball “gag,” one of Cronin’s personal favorites, is a twist on what’s been seen before. The novel leg-shredding grater came to him when he was writing the script, walked into his kitchen, and saw it as a eureka moment.

Rise also includes more Deadite dialogue than before, which Cronin says is justified by the intimate setting and familial relationships. That leads to memorable lines from Sutherland’s Ellie—such as “Mommy’s with the maggots now”—which Cronin jokes will make it onto T-shirts. It is an obvious question if the success of Evil Dead Rise might lead to a sequel.

“I was never trying to bait for sequels,” says Cronin, who was only aiming to make a great movie. But he leaves up to four avenues of the story open, including one that picks up 20 minutes after the final shot. There’s an intentional reason he closes out Evil Dead Rise the way he does.

“And it’s not for the story to just end when the credits roll.”

Evil Dead Rise premieres at SXSW and opens in theaters April 21.

If You Were Last

Anthony Mackie (that’s Captain America to you these days), Zoe Chao (Love Life), and Natalie Morales (Dead to Me) star in this romantic comedy—that’s also a sci-fi movie!—from first-time feature director Kristian Mercado and screenwriter Angela Bourassa, whose script for this landed on the 2020 Black List of best-unproduced screenplays. Two astronauts—a man and a woman—stranded for years in space manage to pass the time without sleeping together. But should they? Or will it ruin the delicate existence they’ve made for themselves? And what happens if they get rescued? The answers lie within.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES

Although there have been three other movie adaptations (all of them regarded as pretty damn lousy), this Dungeons & Dragons certainly seems like the first modern, decently-budgeted attempt to create a new media franchise out of the legendary tabletop role-playing game. After a development process stretching back nearly a decade, Honor Among Thieves comes to the screen courtesy of writers/directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Game Night, Vacation), with a cast toplined by Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, and Hugh Grant.

The story follows a “charming thief” (we expect that’s Pine) who leads a band of unlikely adventurers on a quest to retrieve an ancient relic before the wrong forces get their hands on it. That’s about as generic a plot description as one might imagine for a fantasy film, but in this case, it’s more about the tone—the filmmakers are seemingly keen to pivot from the somber strains of Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings and aim for something a little funnier and more contemporary.

Paramount is no doubt hoping that a good buzz from a geekier festival crowd will catapult Honor Among Thieves to success when it arrives in theaters on March 31. The studio clearly wants to tap into the voracious fantasy audience as well as the game’s loyal fanbase—and collect all those sweet, sweet gold pieces along the way.

I Used To Be Funny

Busy indie actress Rachel Sennott (also appearing at the festival in Bottoms) leads this dark comedydrama from Canadian writer/ director Ally Pankiw. Sennott plays Sam, an aspiring stand-up comedian and au pair whose recovery from past trauma coincides with the search for a missing girl she used to nanny for. As she decides whether to join the search efforts, Sam must come to terms with her own PTSD. Yes, this is billed as a comedy-drama, but it sounds like pretty serious stuff to us.

Bottoms

Teen sex comedies are a perennial favorite, and Bottoms seems poised to put a new slant on a timeworn but still often funny cinematic trope. Written and directed by Emma Seligman (Shiva Baby), the film follows two unpopular girls (Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri), both in their senior year, who launch a fight club in school in order to impress cheerleaders in the hopes of hooking up with them. The goal: to have sex before graduating from high school. A queer spin on the narrative of high schoolers looking to leave their virginity behind, Bottoms takes a page from Booksmart and Superbad

— DON KAYE

BY DON KAYE

FLAMIN’ HOT

Directed by Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives) in her feature debut behind the camera, Flamin’ Hot tells the true story of Richard Montañez, a janitor working at the Frito-Lay food manufacturing conglomerate who claimed to have invented the popular Flamin’ Hot Cheetos flavor on his own. Whether his claim is true or not (and it has been disputed), his rise through the ranks from laborer to marketing executive—and link to the Latino/a community—seems poised to be an inspirational story. Jesse Garcia, recently seen in Michael Bay’s Ambulance, stars as Montañez, with support from Dennis Haysbert and Tony Shalhoub.

Scrambled

Writer and actor Leah McKendrick returns to SXSW (where her thriller M.F.A., which she wrote and starred in, won a Grand Jury Prize a few years back) with her feature directorial debut, which she has also penned and is starring in. This time out, she ventures into rom-com territory as a woman named Nellie Robinson who watches everyone in her life getting married and decides to freeze her eggs as the dating scene around her provides little hope for a meaningful relationship. Yvonne Strahovski, Clancy Brown, and June Diane Raphael also turn up during the potentially funny/poignant proceedings.

Self Reliance

Problemista

Problemista is the writing and directing debut from breakout Saturday Night Live writer Julio Torres, who also stars in the film as Alejandro, a toy designer from El Salvador who has landed in New York City and aspires to bring his unusual designs to life. But he runs up against the immigration system when his work visa expires, forcing him to take a job with an eccentric outcast from the art world in order to stay in the country and hopefully fulfill his dreams. That art-world oddball is played by Tilda Swinton, adding to her ever-growing collection of offbeat performances, and the movie, billed as a “surreal adventure through the equally treacherous worlds of NYC and the U.S. Immigration system,” also features Isabella Rossellini (Blue Velvet) and RZA (The Man with the Iron Fists) in its eclectic cast. This is a new release from A24, the studio that scored big time last year with Everything Everywhere All at Once and started the buzz for that film right at this same festival (the company also premiered two other acclaimed films at the fest last year: X and Bodies Bodies Bodies). We’ll see if Problemista can work that magic again and provide a launching pad for Torres as a creative feature film force.

Actor Jake Johnson, known around these parts from his work in Jurassic World and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, makes his feature directing and writing debut with this black comedy about a man who participates for $1 million in a game in which hunters try to kill him. Now he just has to convince his family and friends the game is real—a tough sell since the assassins only attack when he’s alone. The cast includes Johnson himself, as well as Wayne Brady, Anna Kendrick, Andy Samberg, Natalie Morales, and the great Christopher Lloyd.