Alyssa Sutherland

In Evil Dead Rise (2023), Alyssa Sutherland talks to her children from the other side of a door. Ellie is a mother who has become possessed, but Sutherland keeps her voice close enough to its old sound to make listening unpleasant. The smile comes slightly late; the head tilts. We were unnerved by the lullaby because she keeps it in tune while removing every suggestion of comfort. These are small, deliberate choices in a film that is rarely quiet.

The route to Ellie runs through small film roles, including The Devil Wears Prada (2006), and wider recognition as Aslaug in Vikings (2013–2016). Television then offered Eve Copeland in The Mist (2017), while Blood Vessel (2019) cast her as Jane Prescott in another horror feature. We would be wary of treating those different jobs as preparation for one performance, but Ellie makes us want more substantial parts for her: someone this exact about movement and speech should not need a monster to play.

Writer-director Lee Cronin understands the value of keeping her at that door, where the voice has to do so much of the frightening. The heavy make-up supplies an appearance, but Sutherland is responsible for the timing and for the disturbing familiarity of the woman beneath it. Lily Sullivan gives Beth a capable, dry presence and has less to work with; Sutherland gets the more rewarding task. She has to leave enough of Ellie’s maternal habits intact for us to recognise what has gone wrong.

There is a limit to what the performance can do for the film. Evil Dead Rise is lean and frightening in bursts, but its insistence on being loud becomes wearing, and it is less fun than it thinks. Sutherland gives us a reason to stay attentive when the noise threatens to become routine. Start here if horror is your sort of evening; we would not prescribe it simply as an acting demonstration.