Fresh voices can breathe new life into an old idea, which is why the majority of Evil Dead Rise‘s cast and crew outside of producers Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and Robert Tapert are newcomers to the franchise. Production designer Nick Bassett and cinematographer Dave Garbett, however, notably worked together on Ash vs Evil Dead before being summoned back by the Necronomicon for the series’s latest installment.
Bassett’s connection to the Evil Dead extended family dates back to the mid-’90s, when Tapert was producing Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess in Auckland, New Zealand, where Bassett is based. “A big part of my film history, really, is with those guys, especially Rob,” he says, crediting Tapert with giving him his break.
Following part-time work on Hercules and Xena, Bassett served as an art director on Young Hercules. His collaborations with Tapert continued with art directing on Boogeyman and Spartacus before advancing to production designer on Ash vs Evil Dead. Bassett worked directly with Raimi on the pilot, then stayed on board for all three seasons. When Evil Dead Rise came up, Tapert personally offered him the production design gig.
But Bassett’s relationship with the Evil Dead franchise extends further than that. “I’m old enough to have seen Evil Dead 2 at the cinema. We saw that at a little cinema in Auckland called Charlie Gray’s that used to show late-night movies and things like that. It sticks with you. I had no idea I was going to do film then — I was more interested in going to art school and doing design — but there are those famous camera moves that stuck with me then.”
Upon receiving the Evil Dead Rise script and meeting with writer-director Lee Cronin, Bassett was intrigued by the change of scenery and the challenge of recreating Los Angeles in New Zealand. “It’s a fun story. It’s a cool franchise. It was more serious than Ash vs Evil Dead in tone, but Lee was really keen to keep the spirit of Evil Dead, and I felt like I knew that quite well.”
The final script was more contained than the earlier draft that Bassett first read. “It got more claustrophobic. In the first script, and this might just be my interpretation of it, it felt a little bit unclear how much we’re going to be outside the building or how many rooms we’d be in. Sometimes out of necessity, possibly budget-wise, but also the story just kept driving it smaller and in tighter spaces with more of a trapped feeling. It helped play to the strengths of what [Cronin] was after.”
Evil Dead Rise starts at a cabin in the woods, but its A-frame structure is an intentionally stark contrast to the cabin viewers have come to associate with the franchise. “I came up with the A-frame as a quick point of difference. It was a quick scout online of what’s in Lake Tahoe that’s different than you’ll see other places. I wanted to take it away from the hunting cabin that was in the original movies. You get one shot of it in the film, so I wanted it to be memorable.” The facade was built on location, while its interiors were constructed on a sound stage.
While the production initially hoped to find a practical location to use for the apartment building in which the majority of the film takes place, it soon became apparent that they were going to have to build it. “There was an idea that it’s an apartment and a hallway, but it’s actually an apartment, a hallway, the elevator is a huge part of it, the parking building that we drive into and the ground cracks plays a lot, and then the underground vault.”
From deciding on a floor plan that serves the story to choosing paint colors, there were a myriad of hurdles that came with designing an apartment. “The real challenge of it was making it sort of warm and inviting before Hell breaks loose and then being able to look interesting with just candle light, torch light, and moonlight. It’s a tired family space that has all this history, and if you had to move from it it’d be a bloody nightmare because there’s so much stuff in it! And then there’s heaps of little nods to the original films we added for fans. That was the fun part.”
Perhaps the biggest challenge was the elevator sequence. A small set that had to perform a variety of functions, it required a 24-hour shift with the main unit shooting with the actors during the day and a small second unit picking up shots at night. “We’d fill it with blood one day, sink it into this blood tank, and then hot-water wash it off and dry it, and then put it back into its un-bloody state for the next day. It was such a strange process,” he chuckles.
Bassett happened to discover the practical basis for the apartment’s art deco exterior while working on a TV commercial in Auckland. “Sometimes it’s just a bit lucky that you find the right thing at the right time,” he notes. But the building was only four stories, so a concept artist was employed to envision what it could look like as a high-rise apartment. With Cronin’s approval, the art department designed the extension in CAD, which the visual effects team then added to on-location plate shots.
“I’m proud of the fact that we were literally able to create an imaginary building and take people for a ride, when I think about what actually existed before we started this film and what we ended up with. Everything being a set meant we were able to control everything,” he says. “I thought the in-camera nature of it gave it a very old-fashioned feel in a way. It felt like how you would make a film years ago, and I think everyone embraced that. That gave it a spirit. I’m proud of the atmosphere we created, really.”
More of Bassett’s recent work can be seen in Sweet Tooth, the second season of which just dropped on Netflix, and Kung Fury 2 (“It’s the craziest movie you’ve ever seen,” he teases), which was shot in 2019 but remains tied up in a lawsuit between producers and financiers. For now, catch Evil Dead Rise in theaters for what Bassett calls “an absolute roller coaster ride full of atmosphere, full of blood, exciting and nostalgic in a really cool way.”
