Evil Dead Burn, 2026.
Directed by Sébastien Vanicek.
Starring Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Greta van den Brink, George Pullar, Erroll Shand, Maude Davey.
SYNOPSIS:
After the loss of her husband, a woman seeks solace with her in-laws. As one by one they transform into Deadites, she comes to discover that the vows she took in life survive even in death.
Now onto its sixth instalment, the Evil Dead franchise seems to have broken free of the shackles of Sam Raimi’s original trilogy and morphed into a themed series that gives young directors a chance to make a horror movie with a bit of a pedigree to kickstart their careers. Not a bad move at all, given that rumours and speculation have always surrounded this franchise as to what it was going to do next, with Sam Raimi himself making announcements for movies that never happened.
If we take the original Bruce Campbell-led trilogy (and the Ash vs. Evil Dead TV series) as its own thing, we then arrive at Fede Álvarez’s 2013 ‘remake’ Evil Dead. Is it a remake of Sam Raimi’s original, or is it a sequel, or is it the beginning of a new narrative? Álvarez, Raimi, Campbell and franchise producer Rob Tapert would probably say all three, but now that Evil Dead Burn and Lee Cronin’s 2023 movie Evil Dead Rise are out in the wild it looks like the 2013 film can be seen as a new jumping off point, although with Cronin himself listed as an Executive Producer on this movie you can probably expect to see one featuring every final character from the franchise at some point (although Bruce Campbell has ruled out appearing as Ash again).
But for the time being we have Evil Dead Burn, directed by French filmmaker Sébastien Vanicek. In proper Evil Dead style we begin with a voiceover explaining about the Necronomicon (Book of the Dead), only this time we have added information about The Circle of the Wise Men, a group of occultists who unleashed the Deadites using the Necronomicon but who also discovered the Kandarian Dagger, the only weapon that can send them back to Hell. Unfortunately, Joseph Price (Hunter Doohan), a writer who is researching his grandfather Benjamin’s involvement with The Circle of the Wise Men, manages to remove the spells protecting the dagger and also unleashes Jessica (Greta van den Brink), the possessed Deadite from Evil Dead Rise, from the lake she ended up in, who proceeds to kill two friends out fishing. Oops…
We then move back to Joseph, who is out celebrating his birthday with his girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan), his brother Will (George Pullar) and his wife Alice (Souheila Yacoub). However, Will and Alice’s relationship is under strain and the two keep antagonising each other, to the point where Will drunkenly drives off after Alice tells him to “Go to Hell”, which he does by driving into the demonic Jessica and dying – or does he? After the funeral, Alice, Joseph, Thya, Joseph’s parents Susan (Tandi Wright) and Edgar (Erroll Shand) and senile grandma Polly (Maude Davey) retreat to their run-down holiday home, and as if tensions weren’t running high enough Edgar is now possessed by the demons that seems to be haunting the family, as each family member succumbs to the evil and Alice must fight for her very soul.
On paper Evil Dead Burn does do what a good Evil Dead movie should by putting a small group of people in one location and picking them off one by one with a variety of gory and inventive kills. In what has been the case since 2013, there is a bit of family drama going on in the background which leads to certain characters having to do certain things to people they care about; in Evil Dead it was drug addiction and in Evil Dead Rise it was sibling rivalry and single parent families, so here we have a toxic relationship and domestic violence lurking underneath the surface for the Deadites to expose and mock, only this time they don’t seem quite so spiteful as they have done in previous movies. That isn’t to say they aren’t, but tonally Evil Dead Burn feels very different from what has gone before, tapping into the oppressive and colour-drained vibe of late 2000s torture porn and, more specifically, New French Extremity, which is not that unusual given the nationality of the director, but when the movie does have its stabs at humour it quite often doesn’t work as well as Sébastien Vanicek probably thinks it does, the dark humour and the violence clashing rather than complimenting each other.
Much of the humour comes from Polly, whose dementia means she is always forgetting who is who and that she maybe knows more than she is letting on at any given time, and when she becomes possessed there is the opportunity there to make her into a mad old hag like Henrietta from Evil Dead II, but the script doesn’t quite go there. She does get her moment, but there are also instances where the character should be maniacally leaping around the screen causing mayhem and she just doesn’t, at least not to the level expected in a movie with Evil Dead in the title.
The other Deadites aren’t quite as ghoulish as they have been in the past, with the exception of Thya, who could have stepped straight out of the 2013 movie. Edgar is the creepiest but that is down to the actor’s own look rather than any makeup job, and his Deadite comes across more like one of the vampires from 30 Days of Night in the way he jerks around, although when he is in shadow with just his glowing eyes on display it does add a spooky atmosphere that isn’t really Evil Dead-like but it is effective.
Released on 4K UHD as a Steelbook, a Collector’s Edition that features art cards, posters and a booklet, plus a standard edition, Evil Dead Burn looks superb and all the practical effects are as juicy and bloody as you would expect, and even most of the CGI is pretty good (except for one scene near the end that brings to mind the decomposed Imhotep from the 1999 version of The Mummy, which is an odd choice to make in a movie whose effects are otherwise faultless), and Sébastien Vanicek’s camera goes all over the place to capture the action, bringing to mind the crucial scene in Fabrice Du Welz’s Calvaire as well as classic Sam Raimi. One brilliant action scene is shot in one take, which is broken down in the special features on the disc, and shows that the director was just as ruthless as Raimi when it came to putting his lead actor through their paces.
Evil Dead Burn is a difficult one in as much as it is a solid horror movie and one that will probably offer up something different with each successive viewing, showing that Sébastien Vanicek is able to craft a grim and gruesome splatter-fest with a story to tell as well. However, as an Evil Dead movie something is missing, and whilst it wouldn’t be true to say that the director of each movie needs to stick to a rigid set of rules as Evil Dead is not a slasher franchise or a James Bond movie, it does need to have a certain feel, a particular energy that is unique to the series.
It is difficult when a director with a defined style like Sam Raimi creates something so iconic that other filmmakers are unable to bring the same vibe, but Fede Álvarez managed to update what Raimi had done without compromising what an Evil Dead movie is, and Lee Cronin also tapped into that same well of inspiration (although that was with his version of The Mummy and not with Evil Dead Rise, but that movie still fits within the franchise better than this one). Overall, Evil Dead Burn is a ferocious horror film with relentless violence and icky gore, but it is also the weakest Evil Dead movie so far.
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Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
