It has been almost a decade since the last Evil Dead movie rebooted the franchise with plenty of gore but very little of the gooey and glorious humor that had the signature of the previous movies and the Ash vs Evil Dead TV show. Now Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise will resurrect the Deadites again, this time in a city apartment block, with a whole new cast but some familiar names working behind the scenes in the form of Evil Dead creator Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell, who have been teasing the tone of the upcoming movie.

Being interviewed for the website BlairWitch.De, Campbell went into a lengthy description of what Evil Dead fans can expect from the latest shambling horror in the franchise that began over 40 years ago. This time around Campbell is acting as producer on the movie but will not appear after claiming to have hung up his Ash Williams boots following the end of the Ash vs Evil Dead series.

“[The film will be] different, this one’s dark, this one’s pretty serious,” Bruce Campbell told the site. “Good, strong performances. It’s a single mom who now has to deal with this book [of the dead]. These days it’s more about the book. That book gets around… handed around, passed along. People try to get rid of it, they try to bury it or destroy it, and they really can’t. So this book just keeps popping up. So it’s really just another story of what happens if this book appears in this particular group of peoples’ lives and how it intersects.”

Campbell went on, “Lee Cronin is a very serious man. He’s a very serious director. He’s a very atmospheric director. It’s gonna be really good. We’ve seen a rough [cut] of it already. It has all the components that we need, it just needs… like anything… it has to be tightened. But we’re in good shape. We let him have a lot of creative leeway. But the basics stay the same. The book, the possession, the rules of how you get rid of ’em. Every new heroine or hero has to learn how to dispel the evil.

“This family is not the same at the end of the movie. They’re gutted. The whole family’s destroyed. These people get possessed – brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. It’s a family affair. This one’s a family affair. They’re all related in this one. I think that makes the possession and killing your siblings, things like that, even harder.”

The official synopsis of Evil Dead Rise reads, “In the fifth Evil Dead film, a road-weary Beth pays an overdue visit to her older sister Ellie, who is raising three kids on her own in a cramped L.A apartment. The sisters’ reunion is cut short by the discovery of a mysterious book deep in the bowels of Ellie’s building, giving rise to flesh-possessing demons, and thrusting Beth into a primal battle for survival as she is faced with the most nightmarish version of motherhood imaginable.”

While it sounds like the new movie may continue to lead the franchise away from the black humor of the original film series, but we will have to wait until the film drops on HBO Max next year to see just how it all turns out.