How Lily Sullivan Got 'Revenge' On Director Lee Cronin After The Blood-Soaked Shoot Of Evil Dead Rise

At winning football games, the team dumps Gatorade on the coach. At "Evil Dead" movie wraps, it only makes sense that the stars dump buckets of fake blood on the director. It sounds like that's pretty much what went down on the set of "Evil Dead Rise," the latest installment of the Sam Raimi-created horror franchise that's known for absolutely drenching its stars in the syrupy red stuff. Director Lee Cronin spoke to Empire about the upcoming film's impressive amount of fake blood, and revealed that even he ended up on the receiving end of some splatter.

"We used a hell of a lot of it," Cronin said about the prop blood that cakes the Los Angeles apartment where Beth (Lily Sullivan) and her nieces and nephews face off against Beth's demon-possessed sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland). The red-band trailer for the film dropped this week and caused quite a splash in horror-loving circles, as news that Raimi and Campbell would produce the film without getting behind and in front of the camera, respectively, previously had fans on edge. We needn't have worried, as "Evil Dead Rise" looks incredible. Its trailer includes not just loads of blood, but also a flayed human scalp, a crunchy bite of glass, and a cheese grater brandished as a weapon. But when it comes to the legacy of "Evil Dead," there's no doubt that the blood's the stuff.

"There's lots of ways of putting blood on screen," Cronin told Empire, including "red water with a bit of food coloring, digital blood, whatever it might be." The crew of "Evil Dead Rise" stuck to the classic, extra-goopy form of prop blood, which looks great on screen but is, on a basic comfort level, probably a lot more involved for actors than blood added in post-production. "We used the old-school, sticky-icky [blood]," Cronin shares, "which led to people just caked and coated."

One of the castmates who we see get caked in the stuff in trailers is Lily Sullivan. In one shot, she drips with dark red gore while brandishing a chainsaw a la Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) in the original "Evil Dead" trilogy. In another shot that appears to be an extra-intense homage to "The Shining," her feet get yanked out from under her by the massive force of an elevator full of blood that ultimately lands on the camera screen. All of this bloody mayhem culminated when shooting came to a close, and Sullivan decided to get Cronin back.

"I got covered in litres and litres of blood when we wrapped by Lily Sullivan, who plays Beth," Cronin told Empire. "She wanted her revenge for how bloody she'd been got." By that point, apparently, the set had pretty much been subject to a deluge of the stuff, since the filmmaker said the movie was shot largely chronologically. "We watched our world just disintegrate around us as we went," he shares, "the sets just getting bloodier and messier and pukier." Now that sounds like a sight that would be Raimi-approved.

"Evil Dead Rise" hits theaters on April 21, 2023.