Evil Dead Burn: All Sound, Fury, and Viscera — Precious Little Soul

The Evil Dead franchise is a bit like a rash that never fully clears up — it keeps coming back every few years, and somehow horror audiences keep showing up to get bitten again. After 2023's Evil Dead Rise reignited interest in the series with a darker, more personal edge, it's now Sébastien Vaniček's turn behind the wheel — a filmmaker previously known for French horror built on claustrophobic dread. Unfortunately, Evil Dead Burn is a textbook case of a movie that knows exactly how to stage a jaw-dropping set piece but forgets how to stitch those set pieces into a coherent whole.

The story centers on an extended family who, as it turns out, are the grandchildren of a researcher who once discovered the one weapon capable of killing a Deadite: an enchanted dagger. On the night of the older brother's birthday — Will (George Pullar), a possessive, mildly toxic nightclub owner — things spiral into nightmare territory when he plows into a Deadite on the drive home. From there, the horror spreads through the rest of the family: his calmer younger brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan), their respective partners, and eventually the parents and grandmother too. This isn't just "kids stumble into a cabin in the woods" anymore — it's domestic horror that happens to come seasoned with an ancient demon.

To give credit where it's due, a few sequences here are genuinely inspired. There's a car scene that turns literally every component of the vehicle — seatbelts, airbags, sunroof, headrest — into a murder weapon, and it's easily the film's high point, choreographed with a precision that earns an involuntary round of applause. There's also a foyer/dining-room brawl shot in one sustained take that's staged with real ambition. If the rest of the film matched the energy of these two sequences, Evil Dead Burn could have been one of the franchise's strongest entries.

The problem is everything surrounding those highlights. The color palette has been deliberately drained to a flat, ashen gray that saps the film of visual life — even the blood looks dull and lifeless. The editing turns clunky in places, the score does little to build tension, and the third-act visual effects noticeably dip in quality compared to the film's earlier production polish. For a genre that lives and dies on atmosphere and momentum, these aren't small nitpicks — they're the kind of thing that keeps yanking you out of the fear and reminding you you're watching a production, not living a nightmare.

Then there's the tone. The old Evil Dead films built their identity on a kind of absurd, gallows humor — the Ash Williams era made a chainsaw-wielding hero iconic precisely because he was funny and terrifying in equal measure. Burn barely retains a trace of that humor. Its cruelty plays colder and more clinical, occasionally to the point where you start wondering whether the brutality is actually serving the story or just showing off the gore budget. A few scenes — including ones involving an elderly character and the family pet — feel more like provocation than genuine horror craft.

Thankfully, the cast rescues a fair amount of this. Souheila Yacoub anchors the film with real presence, balancing physical toughness with emotional vulnerability. Erroll Shand makes effective use of a menacing screen presence as the father figure who turns, especially in the early scenes where grief and horror blur together. But the standout is Tandi Wright as the mother — a character who embodies the kind of family denial that keeps excusing an abusive son no matter what he does, even after he's literally returned from hell. It's a genuinely sharp thematic idea, one the script sadly doesn't dig into much further.

In the end, Evil Dead Burn feels like a film so enamored with its own iconic images that it forgot to build a solid story around them. Vaniček clearly has talent for staging physical horror and action, but as a complete film, this one feels scattered — too preoccupied with chasing brutality for its own sake, and short on the room to breathe (or the dark humor) that defined this series at its best.

For die-hard franchise fans, it's still worth a watch for a couple of genuinely committed horror-action sequences. But for casual viewers just looking for a solid Saturday-night scare, it might be worth waiting for the next installment and hoping the series finds its way back to fresher — and slightly more fun — ground.

⭐ Rating: 2.5 / 5

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