Director: Sébastien Vanicek
Writers: Sébastien Vanicek, Florent Bernard
Stars: Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan
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.
Some of my earliest memories of watching horror films came from the Evil Dead franchise. I had no business watching those movies, but I’m a child of the early ’90s. I was unsupervised a lot of the time, and I would watch whatever caught my attention on cable. The gore, action, and comedy from the first three Evil Dead films are near perfect, and they’re pillars of the horror genre. The newest installment in the franchise wastes no time getting the audience’s heart pumping with a malicious opening sequence that could make even the biggest Saw fan wince.
Evil Dead Burn offers another story of a family cursed by unforeseen evil that emerges from the Necronomicon. Joseph Price (grandson of Benjamin Price from The Evil Dead) does some research of his own, attracting a familiar deadite still lurking around the places where they once wreaked havoc. After this, we meet our protagonist, Alice (Souhelia Yacoub). She’s celebrating her brother‑in‑law Joseph’s birthday with her husband William (George Pullar) and Joseph’s girlfriend ,Thya (Luciane Buchanan). Tensions run high after Alice and William get into a huge argument. Drunk and disgusted, William speeds off in his car despite Joseph’s pleas for him to stop. William gets into a head‑on collision with our familiar deadite, they recite words from the Necronomicon, and William becomes possessed.
From here, the story is told from Alice’s POV, giving us a look into her relationship with Will’s family. They reunite to celebrate Will’s life with a cremation ceremony and time together at their old lake house. The possession spreads throughout the family, and one by one, they’re overtaken.
Director Sébastien Vanicek gives the audience a new French Extremity‑style approach with this sequel. Vanicek’s first feature film, Infested, was a gooey, oozy, terrifying look at an apartment complex overrun by huge spiders. The spiders could’ve been considered at the top of the call sheet in that movie. Likewise, in Evil Dead Burn, you can consider the deadites the stars of the show. They’re the most hardcore and grimy I’ve seen since Evil Dead (2013). Vanicek’s direction of action sequences and tension‑filled moments is impressive. I really appreciate that none of the Evil Dead movies are particularly the same; each one has its own bite and bark that separates it from the others. We get 90% gore, action, and tension with a 10% sprinkle of comedy.
The Price family is extremely dysfunctional and trauma‑filled — but what family doesn’t have its problems, right? Themes of trauma‑ridden households, physical and mental abuse, and staying in a relationship for too long are all present. Honestly, that’s the most realistic thing about a movie featuring demons with body contortions and dogs.
The score by Double Danger sounds similar to their last collaboration with Vanicek on Infested, but cranked up to 13. There aren’t many soft spots in the score that make you think, “This is the part of the film that’s toned down.” The tension is high, the scares come in abundance, and the gore is delightful. Phillip Lozano’s cinematography is a welcome addition to this sequel. It’s gloomy, dark, and icky. This movie features a lot of greys and blacks in its color palette compared to Rise, which leaned heavily on blues and reds. The camera techniques impressed me as well — the overhead shots of action, the one‑shot scenes of characters narrowly escaping deadites, and more made me feel like I was watching Malignant or Children of Men.
This outing in the Evil Dead series easily lands in my top three of the six movies. There were a few instances of bad CGI and visual effects, but sometimes that’s to be expected. Prosthetics and makeup‑wise, this is right up there with the other films. I wasn’t turned off by the meanness of this film; all of the movies in this franchise have been mean in some way — it’s just that the original three had more comedy to lean on than their successors. The next installment in this franchise arrives in 2028, and I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us horror fans.
