What happens at the end of Evil Dead Rise?
Lee Cronin's Evil Dead Rise (2023) moved the franchise out of the woods and into a condemned Los Angeles apartment block — then, in its final minutes, put it right back in the woods again. It's one of the sneakier endings in modern horror.
The final fight
After the Book of the Dead possesses tattoo artist and single mum Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), the infection tears through her family and neighbours across one night. By the finale, only two people are left standing: Ellie's pregnant sister Beth (Lily Sullivan) and Ellie's youngest child, Kassie (Nell Fisher).
In the building's car park, the remaining Deadites — Ellie, her possessed children Danny and Bridget, and infected neighbours — fuse into a single multi-limbed abomination the film calls the Marauder. Beth grabs the franchise's signature chainsaw, has Kassie fire up an industrial wood chipper, and feeds the creature into it. Ellie's severed head rolls clear for one last taunt aimed at Beth's insecurities. Beth kicks it into the chipper.
Who survives the night
- Beth — alive, pregnant, and now Kassie's guardian. She keeps the chainsaw, just in case.
- Kassie — the only one of Ellie's three children to survive.
- Ellie, Danny, and Bridget — all possessed and destroyed; Danny dies of wounds inflicted by the possessed Bridget before the Marauder even forms.
- The evil itself — very much not destroyed.
The twist: the opening was actually the ending
The film opens at a lakeside cabin, where a young woman named Jessica scalps her friend Teresa and kills Teresa's boyfriend Caleb. It plays like a classic Evil Dead cold open — until the final scene reveals what it really was.
The morning after the tower-block massacre, we meet Jessica properly: she's a tenant in the same building, a floor below, who slept through the entire thing. As she loads her car for a weekend at the lake, she spots the blood-soaked car park — and the lingering evil takes her. She drives off to the cabin, and the film loops back to its own first scene. The prologue was the epilogue all along. Beth and Kassie escaped; the evil just changed vehicles.
Did the story continue?
The franchise did, though not with Jessica. The follow-up, Evil Dead Burn — directed by Sébastien Vaniček and produced by Sam Raimi — hit cinemas on 10 July 2026 with a fresh standalone story about a widow whose in-laws turn into Deadites one by one. The book, as ever, keeps finding new readers.