Evil Dead Rise ending explained: What happens at the cabin?

As ever, the film explores events after an army of Deadites is awoken when someone unwittingly opens the Book of the Dead, with the demonic parasites this time unleashing their unique brand of carnage on an innocent family.

The unfortunate victims are single mother Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), her three children Danny (Morgan Davies), Bridget (Gabrielle Echols) and Kassie (Nell Fisher), and her estranged sister Beth (Lily Sullivan), who has just returned to their lives with some major life news to disclose.

If you're wondering how it all ends up for the poor family – or just need a recap after watching the film – read on to have the Evil Dead Rise ending explained. But beware, there are major spoilers ahead!

Evil Dead Rise ending explained

The horror all begins when an earthquake reveals a secret vault underneath Ellie's apartment building. Naturally, the kids decide to investigate and in doing so they find both the Book of the Dead and a mysterious collection of records, with their curiosity soon getting the better of them...

Of course, fans of the franchise will know that opening the book and playing the record can mean only one thing: the Deadites have been awoken and are now at large in the building.

The Deadites characteristically waste no time in torturing the apartment's inhabitants, and Ellie is their first victim – brutally killed by cables in the building's elevator before she is possessed, subsequently proceeding to terrorise the other members of her family.

Bridget gets an especially raw deal, and is soon possessed herself after Deadite Ellie cuts her cheek with a tattoo gun and licks her, and things only get more violent when Ellie is lured into the corridor of the apartment block and goes on a chilling murder spree.

By the end of the bloodbath, only Beth – who has now revealed she is pregnant – and Kassie have survived the ordeal and the two manage to escape to the block's parking garage, where they are chased by a particularly gruesome Deadite monster that appears to consist of the bodies of all their family members.

After a suitably brutal showdown, Beth is successful in luring the creature into a woodchipper and it is duly destroyed, allowing her and Kassie to drive away to safety. But that's not quite the end of things...

What happens at the cabin in Evil Dead Rise?

Although the majority of Evil Dead Rise unfolds in an apartment building, the main action is actually bookended by two sequences that take place in a cabin-in-the-woods setting that the franchise is best known for.

At the start of the film, we see two female friends who appear to be holidaying together at the cabin – only for it to emerge that one of them is clearly possessed. She viciously removes her friend's scalp and proceeds to decapitate her boyfriend who is sitting by a nearby lake.

For much of the runtime, it is unclear how these events relate to the main plot of the movie – beyond the fact that we are told the cabin scene takes place a day later in the chronology. However, after the garage scene, it becomes clear how the two strands are linked.

The possessed girl from the cabin is revealed to be another tenant of the block where Ellie lived, who had emerged in the car park to discover the bloodbath as she was preparing to drive to the cabin retreat. Naturally, she opened her mouth to scream – and the Deadite chose this moment to swoop in and possess her.

Evil Dead Rise is released in UK cinemas on Friday 21st April. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what's on tonight.

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