Warning: SPOILERS for Evil Dead Rise.Evil Dead Rise, Lee Cronin’s unique take on the iconic horror franchise, is in theaters now and has garnered favorable reviews from fans and critics alike. Evil Dead Rise brings fresh blood to Sam Raimi’s world both literally and figuratively, introducing a number of new characters that Lee Cronin is already hoping to bring back into the fold in one way or another. Evil Dead Rise also changes things up from previous franchise entries by largely keeping the events of its story relegated to a condemned apartment building, with the claustrophobic atmosphere almost acting as a character in itself.
The unique look and feel of Evil Dead Rise was shepherded along by production designer Nick Bassett, who previously worked in the same universe on the hilarious horror comedy Ash vs. Evil Dead. Bassett helped shape everything from the film’s unique A-frame cabin, to its vine-covered apartment building, to the dilapidated building interior, ensuring that everything both looked the part and could withstand filming; having gallons of blood pour from an elevator necessitated a specific set creation. Bassett’s other recent work includes Sweet Tooth season 2 and Kung Fury 2.
Nick Bassett spoke with Screen Rant about his work on Evil Dead Rise, Easter eggs tying the film to the original movies, and more. Note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Nick Bassett on Evil Dead Rise
Screen Rant: Thanks for taking the time. I’ve seen the movie twice now, so I’m excited to talk about it.
Nick Bassett: I saw it the other night for only the second time at the cinema. We did a crew screening and everyone was so quiet because everyone’s just watching their own work, so you don’t get very much audience feedback. It’s just deathly quiet. I went the other night and watched it with a crowd, and it was good.
Do you like watching stuff that you’ve worked on?
Nick Bassett: Often, I’ve ended up with the luxury of being able to watch dailies and see it come together. With Sweet Tooth as well as Evil Dead. I’d kind of seen them building and knew what to expect, but I think the first time I watch anything I’m literally not listening to what anyone’s saying. I’m just looking at the background and going, “Why did we choose that color?”
If you watch it, like, six months or a year later, it’s quite a different experience. You’ve kind of forgotten everything around the making of it. I still think of scenes in Evil Dead Rise as sets within a studio, so I’m very aware of, like, if you open that door, there’s nothing behind it. I think when you wait a little while it and you see it fresh again, after a year or so, you’ve kind of forgotten all that.
I cringe a little when watching things, going, “I hope it all holds up.” I was really proud of Evil Dead because I felt like you once you went into that movie, I felt like it stayed there. It’s trickier on TV to do that, to hold everything together, but on a little film like that very compact it’s a little easier to create that environment and hold on to it.
I was going to ask if it was easier to do a film like this that mostly takes place in one building, because you can just make one aesthetic and work within it.
Nick Bassett: I think it is, really. I’d come off Sweet Tooth season one where you’re just doing so much world-building. With TV, it’s so fast. On a film, you get more time, you’ve got one script, and you end up boiling it down to shots with the director and the DOP. we’re going to shoot here. With TV, until the day of shooting sometimes, you’re like “I have no idea how you’re going to shoot that angle.” It’s so busy and the schedules are so packed that it’s quite hard to hold on to it. You really hope that the grade and all the other things will help tie the look of the show together a little, even though you’re trying itself as an art department.
With Evil Dead Rise, it’s very contained, but then there’s another pressure. The pressure is that the whole film’s set in this apartment. It’s a different kind of pressure, but it’s actually more enjoyable as a filmmaker, I think, without trying to compare shows.
Because we had built everything in the studio, the production office was just a short walk from everything else. We’d go down and block it through with the director and DOP. Then we’d go, “We know exactly what the background and we know exactly what’s happening.” That’s the bit that makes you go “This is true filmmaking,” because you’re literally designing frames for the movie. With TV, that’s the dream, but the reality is that time’s running out, and light is fading, and it’s just like, “Holy s***.” Especially on Sweet Tooth; we were gunning it on that. Season 2 was bonkers.
Do you have to do everything on a set for Evil Dead Rise because you’re throwing blood and stuff everywhere?
Nick Bassett: Yeah. I did the TV show Ash vs. Evil Dead as well, and it was the same thing. As an art department, you’ve got a certain amount of money, and certain amount of time and resources. You read a scene and you go “It’s in a diner; that’s cool.” You get the location guys to start looking for a diner, or something we can turn into one, and then in the next episode a car drives through the wall, and it’s like, “Okay, so we’re building it,”
Everything with blood is such a messy business. We build everything up off the ground, everything’s waterproof, and every material used has to not swell up with moisture. That learning curve, we did on Ash vs. Evil Dead. Once you’ve done a few horrors, you get it. There’s a whole foundation you’ve got to build.
For the blood elevator, we built it out of materials that allowed us to put it in the blood, and then take it outside, wash it off, and put it back in the set for the night crew. All of us were running this strange operation. It must have looked pretty funny to everyone looking in on us, because we were in just a warehouse in South Auckland, with blood everywhere. Everyone comes out covered. You go to get a bottle of wine after work or something, and you’ve got blood all over you. There are trucks with massive tankers of blood pulling in. It’s funny, I always think about, from an outsider’s point of view, how weird it all is.
Writers and actors often come up with their own backstories for characters to inform their work. When you’re coming up with the look of areas like the bank vault with the crosses hanging from the ceiling, do you do anything similar?
Nick Bassett: I think there are different versions of that. The vault was very much something that Lee had in his mind, being Irish and being brought up Catholic, I guess. With those symbols, he knew the moments he wanted to get in there, and so we worked on that together.
It took a while, though, to go, “What is the space? What was it?” It was written as a bank vault, but we thought about what’s happened since. You create your own logic, I think, your own version of “Who came in here and put this in? Why was it here?” The script is always evolving, too. I’d almost think to read the first draft to go, “Oh, that’s right, it evolved.” That’s a great thing; if you’re working with creative people, you can start to evolve it a bit.
As for the backstory with the characters, we definitely take a lot of that on ourselves. Every bedroom in that house has a backstory that, while it’s in the script, has the details. It’s something you keep building with your art department, and then with the director, always double-checking that we’re on track. The last thing you want to do is go and do something and have something be wildly wrong.
With Danny’s room, we were just like, maybe the dad used to make music there, play music there, or whatever. You kind of justify why all these records and this hi-fi is there. There’s a lot of dressing in that set where we needed to make it feel very family-ish, and very entrenched, and try and avoid sort of links to anything fashionable. I’ve been to those, I know those houses, and I’ve seen people who live like that. That place is impractical, really. I quite liked the idea of creating an apartment that was slightly dysfunctional from the beginning. It’s a strange layout, it’s quite unique, and it’s all kind of retrofitted.
That backstory is something I got really involved in. “What was the history of the building?” In the script, it said it’s an Art Deco bank and there are apartments, so we just took that idea further. When I worked out the architecture, I was like, “It feels like these might have been old bankers’ offices, and they’ve been re-configured, and then someone’s come in and turned them into apartments.” To me, it was once the old bankers’ offices and executive offices, and that helps.
It’s like, “It’s not just a room. What was it before? What was the painting before, and what are the layers on the wall?” That’s the fun, really. You’re kind of writing; you’re not writing the script, but you’re adding to the script. You keep building these things, and it makes everything more robust.
I’m happy you mentioned Danny’s room, because I was going to say that Danny has quite the setup. I want to ask about Evil Dead Easter eggs, but are there record Easter eggs in there? Records you all love that you put into Danny’s collection?
Nick Bassett: We go really deep into that. Certainly on Ash vs. Evil Dead, we did that with everything like the posters on the walls. The backstory of that room, this is how I saw the apartment, was that that room was probably part of a living room at one point, and then maybe it was a music room for the parents. In the script, there’s really no clue as to what the father or the partner does; he’s there and then he’s gone, so it could easily have been all his stuff, and Danny’s moved in and layered it up.
That big Three Stooges poster was an idea I had. I just loved the idea of those three faces behind Danny, and I thought maybe that was something he had torn off a wall in an alleyway and stuck up, so it’s all layered up with posters. In the original Evil Dead movie, in the cellar, there was a Hills Have Eyes poster, and that’s actually underneath there.
And we’d go to record companies and local companies; there’s so much real stuff in there as well. Then, we built up his whole stereo thing; it’s all very retrofitted as well. In choosing the turntable, we wanted something that has a bit of style. It’s a quite rare turntable, actually; it’s one thing I wish I’d kept, to be honest.
In Ash vs. Evil Dead there was Eli, the lizard that was Ash’s pet, so we actually created a little lizard enclosure in there too. Without trying to be too retrospective and gimmicky, it was quite fun to layer in little bits for fans. It’s really a combination of the set dec, the art directors, myself, and Lee , and we’re all layering it in there and making sure we don’t go too far, and that it doesn’t feel like too big a tribute show. There’s a fine line there.
I love the exteriors in this film, from the unique design of the cabin to the plants creeping up the side of the apartment building. How much work did you put into making sure everything was going to stick with the audience right away?
Nick Bassett: The cabin was quite a weird one, because it’s written as a cabin somewhere near California. The other Evil Dead cabins are supposedly in Michigan, but shot in Tennessee. I actually straight-out did a quick Google search of Lake Tahoe and places nearby, and there were quite a few A-frame cabins. There were many things, there were many styles, but the A-frame struck me as something you look at and go, “Okay, we’re not in the same place as we were.” I wanted to make sure you didn’t just go, “Is this their version due to copyright? Is this meant to be Ash’s cabin?” We debated it a bit, because it’s like, “Is it right? Is it too different?” The meanness of it felt quite good for me. It’s quite a sharp, nasty shape.
We had virtually very little money to build it, so we just built the front wall. Because it’s on a wide lens, the lens just bends the walls back, so we got away with literally just the facade of it. I even remember Rob, the producer, saying “Dude, you’ll never get away with it.” But those decisions are quite important— “Where do you spend the money?”
Then, the bank building was always scripted as an Art Deco building. Lee had always had that in the script, and I just started looking for buildings around Auckland. You could make the whole thing up, but I felt like we wanted to start with something that was grounded. I was actually on a TV commercial and got completely distracted by this building in the corner that I’d seen my whole life, growing up in Auckland, but hadn’t thought about much. I was like, “That could actually work well for Evil Dead.” We got a head scout to go around, and nothing was as good as that one, but was only four levels tall; it was very short.
Ronald, one of the producers, said it would be cool to have vines in the parking lot, almost like you’re in the cellar of the cabin. Then, as I started thinking about the vines creeping outside, I was like “Do any vines actually grow like this in LA?” It’s not a very typical kind of LA building, or an LA thing, but I found one version of it and I was like, “That’s enough for me. Let’s go.” Where’s home for you?
I’m in LA now.
Nick Bassett: You look at it, and you might go, “This doesn’t look anything like an LA building,” but it felt like being memorable was more important than being area-specific. I just want something you look at and go, “That’s unique.”
As an art department, we designed the rest of the building. We scanned it all, put it in 3D, built that upper layer as a 3D model, and concepted it all. The concept artists did a really fantastic job of it. There’s virtually nothing that was usable about that location, apart from looking straight at the building. We didn’t have a reverse, we didn’t have anywhere else; everything behind us was not quite right. We built in the doorway and everything into it, dressed some of the vines on, and VFX extended them up, and we used practical rain, smoke, and all those tricks.
Bassett also shared key concept art related to the discussion. Check it out below:
About Evil Dead Rise
The Evil Dead franchise continues with Evil Dead Rise, a dark fantasy/horror film written and directed by Lee Cronin. Beth (Lily Sullivan) heads on a road trip to visit her sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and her children. However, when the Necronomicon is discovered in Ellie’s L.A. apartment building, the Deadites rise back from their demonic realm and begin to bring hell back to earth once again.
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Evil Dead Rise is in theaters now.
