Evil Dead Rise and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret are kinda the same movie

It’s not uncommon to see new movies nostalgic for 80s and 90s kids – the current cycle of reboots and spin-offs seems to be aimed mostly at that particular audience, sometimes blurring the line between a legacy sequel and a regular sequel fades. However, two current films go back a bit further and revive new releases that will be most familiar to people born in the 1960s and 1970s. Evil Dead Rise celebrates the 40th anniversary of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films (and the 10th anniversary of the most recent remake for that matter) by revisiting the unsettlingly brutal menace of Raimi’s 1983 original, while Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret adapts the classic 1970 Judy Blume coming-of-age novel by preserving the historical setting (and candor about periods).

These two films are vastly different in style and subject matter, but they share an unexpected common ground: they both update and tweak their source material by adding in the complications of parenthood. In doing so, they both come to some valuable, inconvenient truths.

On the surface, Margaret seems like a faithful adaptation. It doesn’t update the adventures of NYC-to-Jersey tween Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) transplant from the early 1970s to 2023, or impose a stronger master plot on the story’s episodic structure. Fans will recognize most of those episodes from the beloved book: jealousy over a friend’s first period; rumors about a classmate who is ahead of the rest in terms of physical development; Margaret explores various religious options while talking to a vaguely conceived God. But anyone who read the book in their youth will notice a substantial departure from Blume’s writing.

Blume’s novel is written in the first person, meaning all the action unfolds from Margaret’s point of view. However, the film has several scenes without Margaret, focusing on her mother Barbara (Rachel McAdams). The family has moved to the suburbs because Margaret’s father Herb (Benny Safdie, the co-director of Uncut gems!) has been promoted. Barbara no longer has to work as an art teacher, and she vows to be a more active parent: she’ll be there when Margaret comes home from school, and she’ll be available to volunteer for as many PTA committees as possible.

Some movies would then dramatize a guilty mother who becomes overbearing as she tries to connect with her reluctant preteen daughter. But Barbara keeps her distance and kindly offers Margaret guidance without suffocating, perhaps because she has to do her own search. As Margaret tries to figure out her identity, driven by her sample of different religions, writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig writes (The edge of seventeen) builds a parallel story for Barbara, who is estranged from both religion and her conservative Christian parents, who disowned her for marrying a Jewish man. She’s also alienated from her life and identity as an art teacher and visibly struggles with how to fit in with other moms (and fellow PTA committee members) who don’t work outside the home. In one scene, she unexpectedly returns to her artistic zone and begins a delicate portrait of a bird outside her window before the brief reverie is abruptly broken.

Little of this is directly articulated. Craig doesn’t pull Margaret away from the central character of giving her mother the same amount of time. Instead, McAdams conveys Barbara’s mournful frustration through a beautiful performance, never losing sight of the character’s warmth and place in her daughter’s story. She helps Margaret with many of the details of being an 11-year-old girl — dutifully honoring her daughter’s request to buy a bra she doesn’t really need — while suggesting with touching grace that these crises of her own don’t end with the teenage years. Barbara feels comfortable without God in her life, unlike her daughter or parents. She is also quietly aware that parenthood has not given her more power or wisdom. This side story adds a subtle nod to the adult Margaret acolytes, serving an adult audience without betraying the child-oriented material.

Evil Dead Rise turns the Margaret approximation. Transposing its action from the traditional cabin in the woods full of young adults to a dilapidated urban apartment building full of relatives, it resembles the original Evil death‘s formula. In the end, the results are similar to previous films: someone finds a Book of the Dead and accidentally summons an unseen but deeply evil demonic force. That power possesses several people, while others, most notably self-doubting band engineer Beth (Lily Sullivan), go through the wringer in a painful attempt to survive the undead onslaught.

In the previous Evil Dead movies, the main character spends most of the movie trying to get through the night. In Evil Dead Rise, Beth has a more fraught job: when her single mother sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) becomes the first victim of the evil force, Beth must protect her nieces and nephew from their own mother. In one of the film’s most chilling moments, just before she completely succumbs to the possession, Ellie begs her sister to keep the kids safe. In addition, Beth has also recently learned that she is pregnant. While she doesn’t talk much about it, it seems clear that this was not a planned pregnancy and that she harbors ambiguous feelings about motherhood.

While Evil Dead Rise draws a lot of physical and existential horror from Beth having parenthood fired at her from multiple directions at once, the movie don’t get too heavy-handed about the idea that she should jump at the opportunity. There’s a clear sequence of events here that writer-director Lee Cronin could have indulged in: Beth would be put in charge of Ellie’s kids for a nominal period of time, earning her sister’s wrath by screwing up, then redeeming and proving herself a mother figure is by slaying literal demons. This default arc never materializes. Facing unimaginable evil and terrible, unexpected responsibility, Beth can only grow bitter and fight her way through.

There is a refreshing honesty in this approach. Evil Dead Rise treats potential parenthood as something that can push people into fierce protection, help them summon their inner strength and focus, without guaranteeing any kind of success. Beth’s track record as a fierce mother figure doesn’t exactly remain spotless, and not because of any particular incompetence. There’s only so much she can do.

Still, this change in the Evil Dead formula reveals something about the franchise. The addition of a mother’s perspective to Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret deepens the material for those who first experienced the material as a child and are now revisiting it as an adult. For Evil Dead Rise, especially when coupled with the remake of Sam Raimi’s 2013 classic by Fede Álvarez, that revision process suggests that the story’s formula is more immutable than it appears. The film resists those platitudes about mother warriors in part because the series resists no subtext at all.

There may still be value, and even some kind of honesty, getting in the way Evil Dead Rise refuses to stand up about the world of parenting. There’s plenty to like in its horror chops, too: it’s a well-crafted film, with viscerally inventive gore, some enveloping child threats, and flashes of the series’ signature dark humor. It pays homage to the brilliance of the earlier films – and how difficult it is to revisit them from a new perspective. By vaguely adding a parent’s perspective (and never going full-on with horror-comedy splatstick in the way of Evil Dead II or Army of Darkness), Cronin’s movie reveals how little Evil Dead has to offer viewers who’ve gone through many experiences since seeing the original – as does the addition of an addiction metaphor to the 2013 film Evil death produced surprisingly little resonance.

The difficulty of expanding or deepening an Evil Dead movie turns any hidden meaning into Evil Dead Rise appropriate self-referential. Beth, a guitar tech who repeatedly misdescribes Ellie as a “groupie,” clearly doesn’t live what her family considers a normal adult life, though she does exude cool, alternative mom vibes. Evil Dead Rise does not necessarily speak to people whose lives have changed enormously in the last 40 years; insofar as it communicates anything, it is the sudden messiness of concern for the welfare of other people. (In this narration, that’s a lot like the messiness of taking care of yourself.) The movie feels unsure about adding another dimension to evil death — just as insecure as Beth is about the details of parenting.

Again, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with this bare-bones approach, which honors both the style and simplicity of the original film. But older crowd is approaching Margaret looking for nostalgia have been given a chance to be surprised – not by a new plot twist, but by the extra dose of mature reflection and honesty they receive alongside the warm memories. Evil death fans, meanwhile, should be glad that filmmakers still honor the deluge of blood and guts that first erupted 40 years ago, or by referencing certain beloved lines from the masterful Evil Dead II. What they won’t find in the new movie is a sign that something about the Evil Dead formula has fundamentally changed. Even the bleakest view of parental anxiety requires a little more imagination.

Evil Dead Rise is in theaters now. Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret debuts in theaters on April 28.