When I think about my life up until now, whatever little of it that belongs to me, I find that my recollections, my thoughts–all my memories–reckon in bursts. Montages that hold quietly in the state of visuality but, instead, are louder in viscerality. What I find is that I feel. Always, despite my not constantly being aware of it.
And, when I think about my community, my friends and family, and what we’ve shared together; on couches, in classrooms, online, at church, in Chicago, Peoria, or car rides back-and-forth between both, I think most minutely of what we said, what we knew, but, rather, on those pangs of whatever humanity that’d chosen to strike me, then and there, in the middle of my chest. I used to believe that nostalgia was pointless until I realized that nostalgia wasn’t just for those years long gone, but for the months, weeks, days, hours, or even seconds that’ve gone by. That I am always walking beside some good or bad feeling, still companionable and fresh, from every moment of my life that I’ve ever laughed, hurt, or cried about. Nothing ever just goes away, it makes room.
So, very naturally, the first time that I’d ever watched Evil Dead Rise I couldn’t fully enjoy the movie because I kept thinking back to the exposition.
The first time I saw it was with my uncle, when I was fourteen, in an otherwise empty Peoria movie theater. What I knew, then, of all the Evil Dead movies wasn’t much. I knew of the Book of the Dead, the way it possesses people, turns them vile and bloodthirsty, and I knew the most important rule: don’t read the book aloud. Which–okay, it’s a book made out of human flesh with graphic imagery of death, peril, and strange ancient writing. I think I’ll be fine. The movie’s main characters are a family of five: main character Beth, her sister, Ellie who’s the mother of Danny, Bridget, and Kassie. The way that these characters developed together, their interactions, their motivations, their hopes, and recklessness, it’s all set up in the beginning.
Beth’s a guitar tech, newly pregnant, Ellie a separated tattoo artist, Danny’s a teenager with aspirations to DJ, Bridget, about the same age as Danny, with aspirations to be an activist, and Kassie, poor Kassie, who just wanted to be a silly, creative kid. I think the movie awakened something in me. Some strange inertia towards the human condition, real or fake, and its ability to be turned on its head. Danny discovered the Book of the Dead and some vinyls of readings from the book after an earthquake, and he played the vinyls aloud. Afterwhich, his mother got possessed, and she took Bridget, and then Bridget took down him. The movie ended after Ellie, Danny, and Bridget combined into something monstrous, and Beth had to shove them into a wood chipper, and they all went spraying. The next morning, after Ellie and Kassie escaped, the spirits possessed someone else, and, naturally, the cycle repeated.
When the movie ended, something strange stilted over me. Yes, it was brutal. But, even more than that, it was almost devastating. I wondered, why them, on that day, this way? What had they suffered, lives lived beneath each other’s eyes, that left them something seething, still, even after death, bubbling red in gory pieces on the floor? How was it for Danny and Bridget, all corrupted and hapless, to be back with their mother, where they started, when their bodies met their end? I just kept thinking back to the start of the movie. When they were all together, alive, thoughtful of a future that they’d never breathe to see. I gave these fake characters lives–I thought about the days prior, when they sought emotion in the air, moved of volition and the grace that comes with knowing that an end may have been near, but it certainly wasn’t nigh. Yes, it was brutal–and sort of evil, too, but, you know. Evil Dead Rise, and all that.
In conclusion, maybe I’m just too woke.
