'Evil Dead Rise' director breaks down film's grossest moment (2024)

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Evil Dead Rise.

The most disgusting moment in writer-director Lee Cronin's just-released, gore-drenched Evil Dead Rise occurs with a typical kitchen accoutrement. Gabrielle Echols' demonically possessed teenager Bridget slams a cheese grater onto the calf of her aunt Beth (Lily Sullivan) and scrapes away a hefty chunk of flesh.

It's enough to put you off Parmesan for life!

After this very disturbing image was included in the film's trailer, the moment instantly became the talk of the horror community and pretty much anyone else who saw it, much to Cronin's delight.

"I knew people would enjoy it. I didn't realize it would become the meme that it has become from the moment that trailer dropped, but I'm happy with that," says the Irish filmmaker. "It's fun in a movie to have something [like that], to see some of the artwork that people have created around it, to have found myself outside screenings signing cheese graters for people."

Cronin was inspired to have a cheese greater feature in his horror sequel while writing the Evil Dead Rise screenplay during lockdown.

"It was driven by me writing the screenplay during the first phase of COVID, and being locked in my apartment, and being told not to go outside your front door," he says. "I felt quite claustrophobic, but what it did do was make me look around the domestic space maybe more than I first intended to when I was writing the screenplay."

Cronin knew he wanted to stage a horrific fight scene in a kitchen setting. "Being Irish, the kitchen is the heart of the home, even in the context of an apartment," the filmmaker explains. "I had the bones of the dialogue and the metaphorical qualities of what the possessed Bridget is saying to Beth, and where we are in the story. I just knew that I was missing something."

He wanted something "particularly visceral outside of a physical struggle between the two of them," he continues. "I walk into my kitchen, and then I saw the cheese grater sitting there, and I was like, 'Ooh, I have to use that.' [I] probably paused lunch and went back and wrote a version of what that could be like. I do remember thinking, 'Where's the gnarliest place that this could be used?' There was something about the back of the calf that felt particularly icky. It's that thing of looking for familiarity with me. Everybody has scuffed their knuckles on a cheese grater before. It makes you tense up a little bit, so it felt like a fun thing to put in."

Cronin says actually shooting the scene was tough but enjoyable. "We had it very, very well rehearsed," he recalls. "It's one of those scenes where it's in a tight space between two characters. There's obviously a variety of beats of performance and action, and attack and defend. When you're in a really tight space like that, you've just got to get your marks so right. It looks quite simple: someone's at a counter, someone walks in, someone gets down. But getting all of that to feel authentic and right, and for it to have the impact that I wanted, I think we [had] like three days shooting that sequence alone in the kitchen."

Sullivan considers her on-screen niece turning her calf into meat linguini one of the highlights of the whole shoot.

"Gaby — she's a brilliant actress, she's a dancer — crawled down, fell onto her wrists. That was all her. No harness work," she says. "That was such an incredible dance with all the domestic utensils of the kitchen. It was a right laugh. Actually throwing the objects, we had to choreograph that a lot. It felt like a dance that one. But the funniest part was Lee was like, 'We're going to do the close-up and you're going to let out a proper horror scream.' I actually can't. There's something in your body that weirdly stopped me from doing it. I was just like, 'We're going to go for pig to the slaughterhouse, everyone! Squealing pig!'"

Cronin is content that the result was worth all the effort.

"It's going to be etched on my gravestone," he says. "I should start my own cheese grater brand!"

Evil Dead Rise is now playing in theaters.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content:

• Evil Dead Rise director calls SXSW horror movie a 'punk rock opera dripping in blood'
• The terrifying Evil Dead Rise trailer takes family drama to next level
• The films of Sam Raimi, ranked