Fans praise Evil Dead Rise for disturbing cinema opening

Audience members were left shaking in their seats during a screening of the new Evil Dead movie.

While you might expect a few scares from the acting on-screen, it was the strange goings on in the theater that really left their mark on fans:

Crowds packed into an huge auditorium this week to catch the next instalment of Sam Raimi's cult franchise, Evil Dead Rise.

But as the room waited for the film to start rolling, organisers had set up a little surprise, with a special reading from the 'Book of The Dead'.

Anyone who's seen the previous films will know that no good comes from opening the cursed text.

So when someone got up and began chanting from the book ahead of the screening, things took a weird turn.

In a creepy clip shared to TikTok, a bespectacled man, looking like an academic, says: "They say that those who read the pages of this book may lose their very soul to it."

TikTok/@xanthepararillo

An ominous start if ever there was one.

He then gets the crowd to chant: "Kandar, estrada, kandos!"

But then, something goes wrong and this once chipper young fella starts freaking out.

"The soul feasters, the formless horrors, they who possess the living and spoil the Eart, the living," he screeches.

"The dead, the deadites, rise, rise, my children! Say it with me, my children - kandar, estrada, kandos!"

Seconds later, there's an unholy gasp from several rows back as a bloodied, zombified woman jolts to her feet, followed by another scream across the theater.

And as the video goes on, more and more of these undead things start popping up, before crawling past regular - alive - filmgoers and shuffling to the front.

TikTok/@xanthepararillo

Basically, it's just not what you need before the lights go out, to be honest.

Despite the best efforts of the hapless academic to find another chant to send the undead back where they belong, he's too late.

Swarmed by the zombies, he's thrown up into the air and dragged away.

I mean, if you're gonna pull off a stunt like this, it's gotta be good, and they knocked it out of the park.

Praising the organisers for their creativity, one fan said: "THIS is how to market a movie."

Echoing the comments, another wrote: "The marketing for this movie is insane and I'm obsessed with it."

"Evil Dead franchise continuing to go full boar on having fun," put a third.

While yet another added: "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen."