Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is a film wholly constructed of indelible cinematic images, but few are as striking as the shot of the elevator doors of the Overlook Hotel opening up and unleashing a wave of blood that flows until it crashes up against the camera. It’s a psychotic vision that encapsulates the energy of the genius creation, based on the beloved book by Stephen King. Perhaps the greatest proof of the moment’s power is recognizing the specific influence it has had on filmmakers – which is a list that most definitely now includes writer/director Lee Cronin, who found an incredible way to reference The Shining in his new movie, Evil Dead Rise.
Without getting into too much detail, there is a sequence in the critically acclaimed new horror film where an elevator fills to the brim with blood and opens its doors on an apartment building’s lobby, and it’s impossible not to recognize it as a nod to Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic (you can see a clip from the scene in the Evil Dead Rise trailer). When I interviewed Lee Cronin during the movie’s virtual press day earlier this month, I asked about the role that The Shining plays in his mind and in his work, and he explained that it’s one of his favorites of all time. Said the filmmaker,
It's another movie I saw at a very impressionable age, and it made a massive impact – in a very different way to Evil Dead because it was so heavily psychological. I didn't know why I was frightened until many years later when I was able to unpick that movie. But its right up there in terms of horror movies, probably top three; of all time movies, probably top five. And it's one of those ones that's kind of buried in me and always comes out on the page.
It’s fitting that a work of intense psychological horror like The Shining would seep into Lee Cronin’s subconscious and influence his own writing – and evidently, it’s how references to the iconic film wound up being one of the Evil Dead Rise easter eggs. Continuing, he noted that he didn’t actually recognize the nods he was making in the movie until he would go back and read scenes he had written:
It's funny with influence, you don't always necessarily... it's not overt, like I sit down and go, 'What's The Shining thing I want to do today?' It's through your ideas, and sometimes then you don't realize 'til weeks later and you're reading something back and you're like, 'Oh, wait a minute. I kind of know where that came from.' Because even, I think, the family in peril in this movie has a little relationship back to The Shining as well, because the family in peril in this context is quite different to the types of characters we've seen in peril in Evil Dead movies of the past.
It’s homage that has gotten the approval of one of the genius minds that birthed The Shining. The image of blood flowing from an elevator doesn’t come from the original novel (it was one of the many additions and changes that were included in the process of adapting Stephen King’s book), and while King has criticized Stanley Kubrick’s work a lot over the years, he has no problem with “an elevator vomiting blood,” and was clearly quite happy to see it happen in Evil Dead Rise. The author recently posted on his Twitter account about the 2023 film, writing,
While I'm busy promoting, how about EVIL DEAD RISE? It's gruesome, it's bloody, it's even got an elevator vomiting blood. Not to mention chainsaw-fu.April 19, 2023
What makes this story even more fun is noting Stephen King's deep ties to the history of the Evil Dead franchise. King had the chance to see Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead prior to its domestic theatrical release and was such a huge fan of it that he wrote an article about the cinematic experience for Twilight Zone Magazine – a huge boost for the ultra-indie movie. And as though that weren't amazing enough, he also ended up having an instrumental role in the making of Evil Dead II through his relationship with producer Dino De Laurentiis.
Evil Dead Rise, starring Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland, Gabrielle Echols, Morgan Davies, and Nell Fisher, arrives in theaters everywhere this Friday, April 21. Be on the lookout for more stories from my interviews with Lee Cronin and the film’s stars, and keep up to date with all of the scary films hitting theaters with our Upcoming Horror Movies guide.
For more Stephen King-related reading, you can read about all of the adaptations in the works with our Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV feature, and check out both our rankings of The Best Stephen King Movies and The Best Stephen King TV Projects.
