Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Sébastien Vanicek
Written by Florent Bernard, Sam Raimi, and Sébastien Vanicek
In Evil Dead Burn, it’s all gas, no brakes, with copious gory violence but not a whole lot of plot, in the most recent edition of the Evil Dead Franchise. This film is a white-knuckle ride. It upholds the franchise’s tradition with extreme elements that will please many loyal fans. It does not, however, provide the charm and certainly lacks the goofiness of the Raimi movies. From the moment the movie starts, the action doesn’t let you up for air. For some, that’s a thrill. For others, it may prove exhausting.
French director Vanicek, coming off directing the 2023 spider horror treat Infested (Vermines), knows a thing or two about delivering an intense film. He is deft with a camera and knows how to pace an action sequence. He also knows how to use a decaying environment and stage a set that will give you the willies. Technically, this is a masterful achievement. It’s legitimately terrifying at times. There are several sequences with viscerally grisly moments that are very hard to watch. The gore is highly effective, much like that in the previous two installments in this franchise: Evil Dead (2013) and Evil Dead Rise (2023). It’s a hallmark of the franchise.
This movie more closely resembles the 2013 Fede Alvarez reboot than Evil Dead Rise. All of the characters are hard to connect with. Their stories are fairly thin. It’s a family, and we quickly understand where everybody fits within the family portrait. But, once the family dynamics are established, it’s Deadite time. Not a whole lot of messing around with relationships or character development; the story opts to just turn up the volume and let the demons loose.
The Cast of Evil Dead Burn
- Souheila Yacoub plays Alice, a French woman in an unhappy marriage with a restaurateur. She has an uneasy relationship with her husband’s family.
- George Pullar plays William Price, Alice’s insecure chef husband. He is a jealous, envious spouse, quick to anger and quick to drink.
- Hunter Doohan plays Joseph Price, William’s younger brother. Joseph is a struggling aspiring writer who has taken an interest in his grandfather’s research on demonic rites. His cowardly nature will prove problematic.
- Luciane Buchanan plays Thya, Joseph’s girlfriend. Unlike Alice and William, Thya and Joseph have a solid relationship.
- Tandi Wright plays Susan Price, the matriarch of the Price family. She devoted her life to her family, sacrificing her own personal ambitions to support her ailing mother and late sister.
- Erroll Shand plays Edgar Price, Susan’s embittered husband. He is not a fan of William and Alice’s marriage, and is a bit of a xenophobe.
- Maude Davey plays Polly, Susan’s dementia addled mother with an amputated left leg.
- Greta Van Den Brink plays Jessica, a demon from Evil Dead Rise, waiting for someone to trigger her return to this world.
- Keanu Karim plays Jared, a fisherman.
- Victory Ndukwe plays Leo, a fisherman.
A Synopsis of Evil Dead Burn
Joseph is engaged in the classic Evil Dead no-no. He turns on his grandfather, Professor Benjamin Price’s reel-to-reel recordings about battling the forces of evil. There is also a book describing the Kandarian dagger, a weapon used to destroy the deadites. The Necronomicon. Joseph finds the dagger, summoning the dormant demons nearby. Foolish human.
Two fishermen, Jared and Leo, are enjoying an afternoon fishing at a nearby Lake. Deadite Jessica, a demon possessed during Evil Dead Rise, responds to the discovery of the evil artifact and emerges from the lake to dispatch the hapless anglers. She then goes in search of Joseph and his family.
Meanwhile, it’s Joseph’s birthday. Joseph, Thya, William, and Alice gather at William and Alice’s restaurant to celebrate. The joy quickly dissolves as alcohol and old family grievances come to the fore. William quickly becomes agitated. After an argument with Alice, William drunkenly gets in his car and speeds away. Fate intervenes as Jessica plants herself in front of William’s speeding car. He hits her and careens off the side of the road, rolling his vehicle over and decapitating Jessica in the process. But she’s a demon, and beheading her does not kill her, as she transfers her possession to William, who is trapped in his car as it bursts into flame, apparently killing him.
At the funeral service, the Price family gathers to mourn. It’s an awkward affair, as nobody else attends; Alice is completely detached, and construction work rattles the ceremony. William’s casket is clumsily taken to the crematorium, but before he gets put in the oven, his father Edgar insists on paying his final farewell. Left alone with the coffin, Edgar hears a knock from the coffin. He breaks the coffin open, releasing deadite William, who kills the cremator and leaves an impression on Edgar.
The family returns to the dilapidated Price family mansion, which is fraught with internal tension. Edgar is feeling a demonic influence, and the powder keg has been set. The deadites are among them, with the desire to destroy the family and to claim the Kandarian dagger. Family members will fall and turn on each other, and gory mayhem is a certainty.
Evaluation of Evil Dead Burn
Evil Dead Burn is a roller coaster with no respites. While this is certainly exciting, it isn’t particularly enjoyable. From the moment the Price family arrives back at the house, all the potential energy gets the movie establishes Alice as the most sympathetic character among a group of largely unlikeable people. Alice survived domestic abuse from William, as told by flashback. So, the focus eventually falls on her to carry the emotional weight for the protagonists. Sometimes, in a movie like Hereditary, difficult-to-love characters are given strong story arcs and room for development. Not so much with this film, even with the revelations for Alice’s backstory.
I say it all the time: in order to invest me in a horror movie, I have to care whether bad things happen to the protagonists. This is a particularly handy criterion when evaluating franchise slasher films, often explaining why I hedge my evaluations of body-count grinders. Certainly, Evil Dead Burn is a more ambitious film. Fundamentally, the story makes sense; it’s just a little underbaked at the expense of non-stop action.
Some interesting tidbits: Vanicek and his longtime collaborator, Bernard, love their Chekhovian devices. They planted Easter Eggs and breadcrumbs all over this movie. As soon as you see the item, you know it will be employed in some sort of grisly exchange. A Weed Trimmer. A candlestick. A bottle opener. A dinner fork. Kebab skewers. Polly’s wooden prosthetic foot. An expensive fountain pen. And, of course, the obligatory Chekhov’s gun. First you show it, then you deploy it. The marketing department employed posters celebrating these items. I enjoyed these winks and nods, though, admittedly, it is a bit video-gamey. For fans of the franchise, we receive some Sam Raimi-styled growling Deadite POV Camera action. It wouldn’t be an Evil Dead movie without a chainsaw or two, and we get one at the conclusion.
Concluding Thoughts
As a fan of the franchise, I rank this feature towards the middle of the group. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn and Evil Dead Rise rate above this film. Evil Dead Burn is better than the 2013 Evil Dead reboot because it has a more original story, though both go the distance for wince-inducing graphic nastiness. I am curious to see how well this film does at the box office. The theater I saw it in had plenty of seats available, which is unusual in this era of horror box-office overachievers.
Perhaps it’s too gory for most “normie audiences. For those of you who revel in practical gore effects, you will love this film. There are multiple gag-inducing “kissing” moments that will make even hardened horror fans squirm. The aforementioned heirlooms wreck bodies, orifices, and faces. I believe Vanicek is going to have a long and fruitful career within horror, and will be yet another French Extremist horror director to break through in the US.
High marks given for nasty content.
Despite lacking strong characters to care about, the movie still delivers terrifying moments without relying on jump scares. This movie is unconcerned about sneaking up on you. It telegraphs its moves and brazenly shows you everything that you would expect to happen. The only merciful cutaway is the family dog’s fate. Trigger warning alert for violence against animals. If you have any triggering concerns, stay away from this film. No sexual assaults, but there is domestic violence. Simply, this is a hard watch.
Somehow, Evil Dead Burn avoided an NC-17 rating. It does not appear that there was any editing of gore or violence. Every character suffers grievous bodily harm. The R rating given to this film is earned, and then some. I would not show this to anyone under 16, and it is not a horror movie for those dipping their toes into the genre. Hardcore horror fans, however: Enjoy!
Review by Eric Li
Beware: The trailer contains a few spoilers. But it’s a doozy!