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In Evil Dead Burn, the franchise takes an even grimmer turn as director Sébastien Vanicek unleashes literal hell upon his poor, miserable souls he calls characters. Well executed, visually engrossing, and relentlessly ruthless, the movie is another solid standalone entry in the series—even if it lacks the wicked playfulness of its predecessor(s).
I was a huge fan of 2023’s Evil Dead Rise. It was dark, it was mean, yet director Lee Cronin played with his audience like the demons toyed with its victims: cruelly but with amusement. Ever since Sam Raimi launched the Evil Dead movies long, long ago there has been an air of silliness to them (peaking with Army of Darkness, of course). The more modern ones are much grimmer, but even Rise was not above some mischievousness.
Evil Dead Burn, on the other hand, is so relentlessly dark it’s hard to find the same level of enjoyment. Yes, people die much the same way—gruesomely—and the demons like to play with their food to some degree, but there’s a slight tonal balance that holds this one back from achieving the same level of its predecessors.
The characters don’t help. While Souheila Yacoub delivers a fierce performance as the film’s Final Girl, Alice isn’t particularly likable or engaging. The rest of the cast doesn’t make it as far, of course, but when they do die, you don’t really care. The best horror movies make you feel something for the characters who get gored by the bull—whether it’s sympathy, hate, or humor—and Evil Dead Burn simply doesn’t have that.
It’s a shame, because on a technical level Burn burns a hot flame. Vanicek builds and maintains suspense, cruelly dispatches with his disposable characters (and isn’t that much nicer to his less-disposable ones), and offers up a mean-spirited villain that is easy to hate and even easier to fear.
The Evil Dead franchise doesn’t need to re-embrace the cheesiness of its early entries (remember, even 2013’s Jane Levy-starring iteration had her wielding a chainsaw) but a subtle tonal shift, a little humor or at list hint of self-cheekiness, would have gone a long ways to turn Evil Dead Burn from a blowtorch into a flame thrower. It’s good, but could have been scorching.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.