After a summer in which horror fans have been rabid over smart genre films like “Backrooms,” “Obsession,” and “Leviticus,” it’s a bit disheartening to see a movie as remarkably dumb as “Evil Dead Burn.” While Sebastian Vanicek’s consistently vicious gorefest has a few undeniably clever set pieces, they’re surrounded by some deeply incompetent filmmaking. A washed-out visual palette, clunky editing, awful score, and seriously dodgy third-act VFX hold back a film that also too often mistakes brutality for personality, resulting in the first film in this impossible-to-kill franchise that is for completists only.
When the franchise made its second comeback in 2023’s “Evil Dead Rise,” many noticed the undeniable mean streak in that movie, but that aspect seems to have taught the wrong lesson to Vanicek and his co-writer Florent Bernard, who lean into what often plays less like creative carnage and more like misanthropic cruelty. This is a movie that takes great joy in mutilation, even of the elderly and the family pet, and while some of it pays off in jolts of righteously twisted body horror, a lot of it just feels exorbitant in a way that might make one miss the days of boomsticks and S-mart. Long gone is the tongue-in-bloody-cheek sense of humor of Ash and the Sam Raimi trilogy, replaced by relentless bodily devastation that occasionally winks at the audience in a can-you-believe-there-are-sickos-that-thought-of-this manner. It gets exhausting early.
At its core, “Evil Dead Burn” could accurately be called In-Law Horror. After a true tone-setter of a prologue in which we see a fisherman get bifurcated before his best mate gets boiled alive, “Burn” introduces us to the family at the center of this one, starting with the youngest branches of the tree on a night out at a club. The place is owned by the aggro Will (George Pullar), who is there to celebrate the birthday of his significantly less alpha brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan). Will is the kind of guy who gives his bro a four-figure pen to passive-aggressively push him to finish his book, much to the dismay of Will’s partner Thya (Luciane Buchanan) and Will’s wife Alice (Souheila Yacoub). After the abusive Will feels embarrassed by a better gift from Thya, he throws a tantrum and speeds off into the night, slamming into a Deadite who just happens to be looking for him.
It turns out that Will and Joseph are the grandsons of a researcher who found the one thing that can kill Deadites: A magic dagger. When Joseph uncovers it, the nearby Deadites sense its existence and come to swallow the souls of anyone who stops them from destroying it, using Will as a sort of Trojan Horse to the entire family, including dad Edgar (Errol Shand), mom Susan (Tandi Wright), and grandma Polly (Maude Davey). Edgar becomes infected first, leading to a movie-best sequence in a car that almost justifies the ticket cost for “Evil Dead Burn.” Imagine how every single part of a vehicle (seatbelts, airbags, sunroof, headrest, etc.) could be used as a weapon, and you’ll have some idea of the ingenuity of this sequence. There are a few set pieces, including an overhead scuffle in a foyer and a oner in a dining room, that are phenomenally staged, explosions of smart blocking and inventive choreography.
It’s in the connective tissue where the rot sets in. First, there’s the choice to just wash out nearly all of the color in the film, which is so gray that one starts to wonder if the operating aesthetic was “ash.” The decision gives the film a remarkably flat dynamic, keeping it from really connecting on a visceral level. Even the blood looks too dark. There are craft choices throughout “Evil Dead Burn” that frustrate, from clunky editing to awkward slo-mo to an ineffective score. These may sound like nitpicking for a movie with a zombie dog, but the worst thing someone can be during an experience meant to terrify is distracted by the filmmakers’ choices.
Vanicek makes up for some of this through his direction of performance, drawing a few great turns from his ensemble. Yacoub is a strong protagonist, one who commits to both the physical and emotional demands of her character. Shand knows how to use his threatening face to maximum effect, especially in early scenes in which his grief mixes with his new role as a Deadite. MVP should arguably go to Tandi Wright, who does a lot of character work between the lines, sketching the kind of overly supportive mother who enables their son’s abuse by refusing to think they could do anything wrong, even after they’ve returned from literal Hell.
The dividing line for people on “Evil Dead Burn” may end up being its abject cruelty. (The MPAA is nothing but inconsistent, but it makes no sense that something like “Obsession” needed a few trims to get an R rating while this blood orgy did not. And, yes, I saw the original cut at TIFF, and it doesn’t compare to about two dozen shots in this one.) It’s a film clearly made by people who were inspired by the French Extremity era of horror, from the setting that feels inspired by “Haute Tension” to the mutilations that would be at home in “Martyrs.” On the one hand, a multiplex movie inspired by some of the most intense, memorable genre films of the last twenty years is a reason for celebration, but “Burn” is a reminder that this kind of intensity is harder to pull off than it looks. Too often, this effort feels like a hollow provocation, a film so impressed by its most memorable images that it didn’t consider how to tie them together.
Finally, it’s hard to shake the sense that this franchise is headed in the wrong direction structurally. A series that was basically a cautionary tale about cabins in the woods and how dumb it is to read from flesh-covered books has been weighed down by the oppressive “trauma/grief era” of the genre. “Evil Dead Burn” is a film about how a woman survives not just an abuser but his enabling family, even after most of them turn into Deadites, and I’ll admit to missing the days when the power tools didn’t come with so many heavy thematic accessories.
Maybe the in-production “Evil Dead Wrath” will get this series back on its feet. After all, it’s proven one of the toughest horror franchises to kill.
