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EVIL DEAD BURN (Film Review)

Sam Raimi’s original films evolved from gritty backwoods terror into manic horror-comedy. However, later directors found their own angles without completely abandoning the series’ twisted personality. Fede Álvarez doubled down on relentless brutality. Lee Cronin trapped Deadites inside a crumbling apartment building. Importantly, they understood that these movies are more about energy and imagination than gore. Evil Dead Burn certainly isn’t lacking ambition, but somewhere beneath the blood-soaked spectacle it forgets that brutality alone has never been what made this franchise memorable.

 

 

Alice (Souheila Yacoub) has found herself surrounded by her late husband’s family after his sudden death. Grief isn’t the only emotion hanging over the gathering. You see, husband Will was abusive, but his family either refuses to acknowledge it. Or they simply choose not to see it. Alice is forced to sit quietly through a funeral where everyone praises this man. He was cruel behind closed doors. 

There’s an uneasy dinner that continues building discomfort as old resentments bubble to the surface, culminating in Will’s father, Edgar, erupting in an upsetting outburst against the family dog.

For a while, Evil Dead Burn plays like a psychological family drama about to be interrupted by supernatural chaos.

That opening stretch has all of the film’s best moments. It gives the horror something tangible to build upon. And like the previous Evil Dead entries, Alice isn’t simply another disposable horror protagonist. She’s exhausted before the Deadites arrive. She is carrying emotional scars that are far more interesting than anything supernatural. 

Yacoub gives Alice quiet resilience that never slips into the exaggerated toughness. Alice is sympathetic from the opening scene. Without her performance the film would collapse under the weight of its own misery.

The screenplay never develops the rest of the family with the same care. Characters exist to uncover their grandfather’s occult research and explain the mythology whenever the story needs answers.

The mother, Susan, shifts between bitter mother-in-law and grieving parent without ever feeling fully realized. Meanwhile, Edgar quickly becomes more useful as a monster than he ever was as a character. 

There’s a grandmother, Polly, whose dementia repeatedly becomes the punchline for scenes that are otherwise trying to explore generational trauma and domestic abuse, creating tonal whiplash the film never fully overcomes.

Once the Deadites finally arrive, there’s no denying director Sébastien Vaniček knows how to stage carnage. A sequence inside a car is a highlight. Vaniček turns seat belts, airbags, headrests, and every confined inch of the cabin into weapons. Furthermore, it’s inventive and claustrophobic. It is exactly the sort of escalating chaos the franchise thrives on. 

Later, an overhead fight unfolds like a gruesome puzzle box. Meanwhile, an extended tracking shot follows the characters through absolute mayhem without ever losing geography. 

Vaniček possesses real visual instincts, and when he’s simply orchestrating horror set pieces, Evil Dead Burn briefly feels worthy of the series’ legacy.

Those inspired moments become islands floating in a movie that mistakes constant suffering for rising tension. Nearly every encounter exists to top the previous one with another shattered limb. There is another punctured body. There is also another increasingly elaborate dismemberment.

There’s no shortage of imagination in the effects work, and the practical makeup deserves enormous credit for making each transformation feel revoltingly physical. Flesh tears, bones snap, and gallons of blood coat nearly every surface imaginable. 

Eventually, the violence stops shocking because the film refuses to change rhythm. Volume is not a substitute for suspense.

Consequently, this weakens the movie’s central themes. Vaniček along with screenwriter Florent Bernard want to tell a story about surviving abuse, inherited trauma, and families that protect monsters instead of victims. On paper, those ideas fit naturally into horror. In execution, though, they often feel more like obligations than revelations. 

Repeated flashbacks underline Will’s abusive behavior, and Alice’s emotional journey is spelled out where it should emerge naturally. 

Previous films found ways to weave addiction, parenthood, or fractured families into the horror without losing sight of the fun. Here, the symbolism frequently overwhelms the storytelling instead of strengthening it.

Philip Lozano’s restless camera is constantly searching for unusual perspectives, flipping upside down, gliding through impossible spaces, or peering down from directly overhead, recalling Raimi’s playful experimentation without simply copying it. 

The color palette often looks strangely drained, flattening scenes that should explode with visual intensity. The editing occasionally becomes so frantic that geography disappears, while some late-stage digital effects stand out for the wrong reasons after so much convincing practical work earlier in the film.

Fans expect that an Evil Dead will be violent. What surprised me was how little fun I was having. Raimi’s films, even at their nastiest, always carried a mischievous streak. The 2013 reboot abandoned much of the comedy but still found a twisted exhilaration in its excess. Evil Dead Rise balanced family drama with moments of outrageous black humor. Evil Dead Burn occasionally gestures toward that balance, but the laughs never land consistently because the movie is so determined to remind you how miserable everyone is. Instead of tension giving way to release, scene after scene piles cruelty on top of cruelty until the experience becomes emotionally numbing.

Evil Dead Burn is the weakest entry in this franchise. Hopefully Evil Dead Wrath remembers that making the audience uncomfortable isn’t the same thing as making them invested.