The new ‘Infernal Possession’ movie that has fascinated critics and the creator of ‘Evil Dead’: “it’s a free bar of blood, scares”

No one better than Sam Raimi (Royal Oak, Michigan, 1959) to be our guide for ‘Infernal Possession: The Awakening’, the new sequel to the film that, in 1981, made it a great horror value. We talked with him about this new installment, about the previous ones, about the current state of horror movies… but above all about being scared.

hidden scripts

“Someday I will teach you the script for the fourth installment of ‘Infernal Possession’ that I wrote with my brother Ivan after the premiere of ‘The Army of Darkness’ (1992)“Sam Raimi promises PHOTOGRAMS in an animated talk at the beginning of March.

“We never found someone to finance it, not even the great Dino De Laurentiis who produced us two and three. All my life I’ve had problems with money professionally. I guess that led me to television, where I had a great time with ‘Hercules’, ‘Xena’ and ‘Spartacus’… and my financial advisor even more. There I was able to pour part of that ‘Infernal Possession 4’ into ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’, but the Sam Raimi that I have inside me demanded a fourth film for the cinema”.

the luck of the irish

With a written argument and with the immovable idea of ​​opening the arc of the trilogy, the remake of ‘Posesión infernal’ directed in 2013 by the Uruguayan Fede Álvarez and the aforementioned teleseries (of which Raimi directed an episode), began an arduous work to find the ideal director. “I interviewed quite a few, but I never stopped finding that special someone who would fit into the ‘Evil Dead’ universe and who would also know how to contribute something new, who would not just imitate. And less to imitate me.”

The wait ended when the Irish Lee Cronin, a specialist in the horror genre, whose ‘Cursed Forest’ (2019) curiously tiptoed through our country, came on the scene, but which aroused the interest and enthusiasm of Sam Raimi: “There was not only a look enveloping visual that caught you. it showed evil as something physical, horrifying and destroying the love between a mother and a child“.

love eaters

‘Hell’s Possession: Awakening’ says goodbye to the iconic cabin in the woods to take us to a condo on the outskirts of Los Angeles no less claustrophobic and trap with no way out for its protagonists.

“It is the story of a mother and her children and how demons use that love to destroy them. It is not a new idea, and it is not that we joined the bandwagon of terror in family settings or with motherhood in the background: in the In the first ‘Infernal Possession’ (1981) there was already the idea of ​​how Evil takes advantage of the love we have for our partner or family to play with you, deceive you and tear out your soul and a good piece of meat. This may be the fear that comes to me the most: that of the loved one turned into a vampire who approaches you appealing to your love and bites you on the neck“.

drag us to hell

Cronin integrated himself well into the project “like a jazz jam session,” says Raimi, “where there is a base melody and each band member contributes their own musical line, but it doesn’t clash. With Lee everything was like this or like a doctor who shows one of his cases to a colleague to help a patient”.

Very fan of these analogies, Raimi defines this new ‘Infernal Possession’ as “a free bar of blood, scares, horrors and the most horrible demons you can find in a film with the Warner logo“.