Evil Dead Burn

No matter which direction different creative teams might want to take each new Evil Dead entry, one consistent element should be a sense of fun. And despite a few standout sequences, Evil Dead Burn fails in this regard.

Picking up mere days after the events of 2023's Evil Dead Rise, Evil Dead Burn focuses on a grieving family on the day of their eldest son's wake. Before the villainous Deadites even begin possessing the family members, it's established that our lead character, Alice (Souheila Yacoub, Dune: Part Two), is the widow of the deceased son and has an already tumultuous relationship with the family. As the supernatural terror begins to descend on the characters, it becomes clear that the horrors of Evil Dead Burn are meant to serve as a metaphor for familial trauma and abusive relationships.

While these thematic elements are not unwelcome in an Evil Dead movie (the series' prior entry actually tackled many of the same ideas), it's the self-seriousness of Evil Dead Burn's tone that proves to be its undoing.

In terms of sheer brutality, Evil Dead Burn is most comparable to Fede Álvarez's 2013 remake. In that film, the viciousness worked in tandem with a wicked sense of humor and a roller-coaster-like pace. With Burn, however, it takes too long to get to the gory chaos, and even when it does, the entire affair is rendered in a drab, gray palette with actors who seem to think they're in a demon-infested Kenneth Lonergan production as opposed to a Sam Raimi-produced romp.

Director Sébastien Vaniček — who made a great first impression with the French extreme horror film Infested — does manage to stage some memorable sequences amid the dour tone. One set piece — a tracking shot in which the family unit faces the full wrath of the Deadites — was striking enough to serve as the film's initial teaser trailer, and another moment in which the family's matriarch (Pearl's Tandi Wright) shares in some prolonged PDA with her possessed husband will be scarred onto my brain for quite some time. Yet these moments are few and far between, and none of them feel distinctly like an Evil Dead movie.

Another element that makes Evil Dead Burn stand apart from its predecessors is how it diverges from much of the series' pre-established lore. Without getting into spoilers, the incantation of the Deadites is presented in a slightly different manner than it has been in previous films, and even the portrayals of the Deadites are at odds with how audiences have seen them behave in the past. While I'm normally not one to complain about liberties being taken with a franchise's mythology, many of the choices made in Vaniček’s and co-writer Florent Bernard's script wind up overcomplicating the simple ideas that made Raimi's original The Evil Dead so successful.

Vaniček and Bernard also make the bold decision to directly connect the events of Evil Dead Burn to Evil Dead Rise. One of the things I've enjoyed most about this new crop of Evil Dead films (starting with Álvarez's remake) is how each story stands alone. So, I'll be curious to see how these connections (showcased during the film's cold open and its mid- and post-credit scenes) are handled in future movies, particularly the upcoming Evil Dead Wrath, which is slated for a 2028 release.

Evil Dead Burn is not an outright failure, but it currently stands as the only Evil Dead movie that left me dissatisfied. However, I'm willing to look at this latest film as merely a singular misstep among the franchise's illustrious 45-year history.

Grade: C-plus. Rated R. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Warner Bros.)