'Evil Dead Rise' director says one of the child actors played with 'fake blood and vomit' to make her feel comfortable on set

• "Evil Dead Rise" sees a family terrorized by demonic beings called Deadites.
• Director Lee Cronin told Insider that he got child actor Nell Fisher to play with "fake blood."

Sam Raimi's vicious Deadites haven't caused chaos on the big screen since Fede Alvarez's reboot/sequel back in 2013, but now Irish director Lee Cronin has taken the reins of the franchise with "Evil Dead Rise," and he's not pulling his punches.

The film follows Beth (Lily Sullivan) as she visits her sister, Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), and her kids in Los Angeles when the Deadites attack and possess Ellie. No one is safe from her, not even her own children.

Speaking to Insider ahead of the movie's release on Friday, Cronin talked about the challenges of working with younger actors.

The youngest actor in the film is Nell Fisher, who plays Ellie's daughter Kassie, and she's constantly surrounded by blood and guts.

With a smirk, the director told us that he persuaded Fisher's parents to let her star in the film with a wad of cash.

"I just slipped them a brown envelope full of cash… They were like, 'It's fine,'" Cronin joked, before adding: "No, I think when you cast a kid, first of all, you need to find somebody really talented."

The Irish director praised Fisher's performance, before saying that he made an effort to earn her parents' trust.

He explained: "First of all, I identified her talent. That's the first thing and she's an extremely talented young performer. I've worked with many... she's really, really special. Then you need to go and build a relationship and a rapport with parents and earn trust and get them to understand what you're trying to do."

The "Hole in the Ground" director noted that Fisher wouldn't have been in the film at all if her parents hadn't approved of the script.

He said: "She never would have been in the room if her parents hadn't already read the screenplay, you know, and got a sense of what this movie was about. Luckily her dad was someone that wanted to be an actor, became an environmental lawyer. But he's an 'Evil Dead' fan as well. So he was giving her a gentle nudge towards it."

Cronin said that he used fake blood and vomit to help Nell "understand the make-believe nature of a horror movie."

"So I would bring Neil and show her things ... I would have these plastic containers full of various different vomits and blood that I could sit there and play with the viscosity and pour them out on the table and be like, 'Do I like it?'" he said. "And I'd get Nell to do the same thing, like, have fun and understand it's make-believe."

"Evil Dead Rise" is in theaters now.