“Evil Dead Rise”, the latest installment from the Evil Dead series, did not impress me enough. While I appreciated how it tries to bring some fresh air to its very familiar genre premise, I was only mildly entertained by all those gory and disturbing scenes of demonic possession as your average seasoned moviegoer, and I came to miss all the loony enthusiastic entertainment of the first three films directed by Sam Raimi, who incidentally participated in the production as one of the executive producers.

After the opening scene which will definitely bring back to you some old memories of “The Evil Dead” (1981) and “Evil Dead II” (1987), the movie immediately establishes its small, limited background and several main characters. When her younger sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) drops by the apartment where she has lived with her three kids, Beth (Lily Sullivan) is not exactly pleased for understandable reasons, but her three kids are glad to see their aunt again, and the mood is mostly pleasant among them for a while before a little family issue of Beth and her kids come out.

While Beth and Ellie come to talk a bit more about that family issue, Beth’s three children go outside for buying some pizza outside, and we are reminded again of what an old and shabby place their apartment building really is. There are numerous shady corners here and there inside the building, and the parking lot at the basement level of the building certainly feels gloomy and spooky without enough light in the space.

Around the time when Beth’s kids come back to the apartment building, a sudden earthquake occurs, and that leads to considerable internal damages including a big hole on the ground in the parking lot. Because the apartment building was a bank many years ago, one of Beth’s kids cannot help but feel curious about what is inside that big hole, and what do you know, the kid soon comes across an abandoned storage place which once belonged to that defunct bank.

It is not much of a spoiler to tell you that the kid eventually comes across some old items which look ominous to say the least. Besides several old recordings made in the early 20th century, there is also an ancient book whose contents turn out to be more disturbing than its cover suggests. Needlessly to say, that book in question is a tool which can summon a powerful demon via a forbidden invocation, and, of course, that dangerous invocation is recorded in one of those old recordings in question.

What follows next is pretty familiar to anyone who has seen “The Evil Dead” or “Evil Dead II”. As soon as the recording containing that deadly invocation is played, that powerful demon literally swoops into the apartment building, and Beth, who happens to be alone outside the apartment right at that moment, accordingly experiences a wicked variation of that infamous wood scene in “The Evil Dead”. When she later returns, she surely shows lots of disturbing behaviors in front of others, who belatedly come to realize what is going on while experiencing more disturbing stuffs along the story.

As its several main characters are terrorized more and more, director/writer Lee Cronin and his crew members is willing to throw lots of gory moments into the screen, and the movie occasionally shows a morbid sense of humor in addition to paying homage to Raimi’s first two films at times. For example, a deliberately disgusting scene involved with an eyeball in the middle of the film is clearly influenced by the similar scene in “Evil Dead II”, and some of you will be certainly delighted when a chainsaw eventually makes an appearance later in the story. In case of a certain shocking moment with one particular kitchen tool, it surely made me wince, and it is a bit shame that the movie does not utilize that kitchen toll in question more.

However, the overall result does not have much of that nasty fun and enthusiasm of Raimi’s first two films, and this weak aspect only makes us more aware of the rather superficial storytelling and thin characterization of Cronin’s screenplay. Despite the game efforts from the main cast members, most of the main characters in the film are more or less than plain figures to be scared or maimed or possessed, and the movie also fails to bring them enough human qualities to make us care about their infernal plight. As the movie ends up simply following its old familiar playbook page by page, we come to observe it from the distance, and we just keep waiting for the eventual finale, which is incidentally soaked in blood and guts as much as required.

On the whole, “Evil Dead Rise” is an improvement compared to the grim disappointment of “Evil Dead” (2013), but it still feels deficient even compared to “Army of Darkness” (1992), which is a bit too flawed but fairly enjoyable for good reasons. It surely tries to do its own stuffs at times, and I was entertained to some degree during my viewing, but it does not feel particularly new or fresh to me while only reminding me more of many other horror films about demonic possession out there. To be frank with you, I now feel some urge to revisit “Evil Dead II” just for having much more fun and scare, and I think you may have a more productive time if you watch it instead.