However, as the priest said in the recording, evil cannot be dispelled once it has been unleashed. That’s the unfortunate discovery for Jessica, who, it turns out, is also a resident of Ellie’s condemned apartment building. A little lucky for the girl, she lives on the fifth floor, below where the staircase had been destroyed during the earthquake.
Cheerfully heading downstairs as she convinces her wary friend Teresa to join her and her boyfriend for a lakeside vacation, she reaches the parking lot and takes a while to notice the evidence of bloody carnage all around her. Panicking at the sight of her, she tries to call for help, but it’s too late: the force of evil surrounds her and she goes straight for her throat just like she did with Ash in the ending of “The Evil Dead”. .
Of course, we already know Jessica’s ultimate fate, having seen it happen at the beginning of the movie. “Evil Dead Rise,” then, is a closed-circuit movie, an ouroboros of blood, dread, and terror. It’s also cleverly open: one can assume that Teresa doesn’t survive that day at the lake, but who knows what the possessed Jessica did next or where she might have gotten to. In the “Evil Dead” universe, everything seems to come back sooner or later: a cabin in the woods, a watch, a book, a recording.
When life throws your way so hard, you can step up and take responsibility like Beth, or, as Ash once colorfully and aptly put it, “run home and cry to Mommy.”
