The Things That Were and Shall Be Again: Evil Dead (2013), Evil Dead Rise (2023), and the Marketing of Horror “Authenticity” through the Promotion of Practical Gore Effects.

Evil Dead (Raimi, 1981) and Evil Dead II (Raimi, 1987) stand as examples of splatter horror par excellence and their innovative gore effects are key to their lasting cult status. The marketing for the long-awaited Evil Dead (Alvarez, 2013) therefore had a sizeable task. On the one hand, there was a need to appeal to existing Evil Dead fans as a sizeable potential pre-sold audience. On the other, there was a necessity to entice new viewers through a sense of product differentiation in a saturated horror marketplace. This chapter will investigate how practical gore effects were positioned as an appeal to both of these audience sectors, as evidence of Evil Dead 2013’s horror “authenticity”, and how this strategy can be discerned too within the marketing of Evil Dead Rise (Cronin, 2023).

After a brief contextualisation of the use of practically created gore within the Evil Dead series more broadly, this chapter will closely examine the Red Band trailers for Evil Dead 2013 and Evil Dead Rise. Through analysis of these trailers, this chapter will explore how gore – more importantly, gore that is created through practical rather than digital means – was centralised in the marketing of these films as a promotional tool, as a means of connecting these later entries to their series predecessors, and how this extended into the marketing for their home media releases.