‘The new trailer is unique to Ireland, this cut is nowhere else in the world.’
While we’ve come a long way from the Ban-Everything-Too-Risqué attitude we might associate with 1980s Ireland, there are still some elements of that mindset in place, which new horror movie Evil Dead Rise had to deal with on its way to the big screen.
Written and directed by Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin (The Hole In The Ground), chances are you’ve spotted the creepy poster for the movie adorning the side of buses all across the country:
However, this is an updated version of the poster used pretty much everywhere else in the world. Additionally, the trailer for Evil Dead Rise seen in Irish cinemas is unique to this country, following requested edits by the advertising boards, who reportedly found both the original poster and trailer too intense for widespread public consumption in Ireland.
When we caught up with Cronin to discuss all things Evil Dead Rise, we couldn’t not bring up the very specific Irish reaction to the promotional campaign for the new horror movie.
Cronin told JOE: “Interestingly, in Ireland, it has been the one place… a little bit in the UK, we’ve had some push back on some of the marketing materials for the movie, for the level of the threat that is there. And that’s okay, I accept the way that certain marketing standards or advertising standards are.
“But even the poster itself carries a lot of threat, because you’ve got this clearly possessed character, and the juxtaposition that she is hugging her children, who seem safe and comforted by her, but [the tagline] says ‘Mommy loves you to death’, I think that says everything about the movie.”
“We had to make some changes to the trailer to actually as well. So the Green Band trailer is a unique cut in Ireland, it is nowhere else in the world. We had to make a couple of little tweaks, and interestingly, one of the tweaks that we made to the trailer I think is far more threatening than the thing that was deemed too intense.
“But it wouldn’t be an Evil Dead movie if weren’t pushing the envelope and actually getting that little bit of pushback and that little bit of fear in the air. That’s important […] I’m happy with that, and also to think back that the original movie was banned here in ’82 or ’83, when it came out here. So I’m closing that circle really nicely!”
Evil Dead Rise arrives in Irish cinemas on Friday 21 April, and you can check out our full interview with Lee Cronin right here:
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