Evil Dead Burn

It doesn’t seem possible, but Evil Dead Burn may actually be the goriest entry in the Evil Dead series. The excessive violence and cackling dismembered Deadite heads fit the tone of the last few installments. The 3^rd film, Army of Darkness and the TV show Ash vs Evil Dead are much more comedic than 2013’s Evil Dead and 2023’s Evil Dead Rise which featured more gore and horror. While the last three Evil Dead movies have provided plenty of Deadite gore, they all have a theme about family drama that expresses itself via Deadite possession and splatter. Dead ‘13 was more about sibling melodrama and Deadites, Rise was sibling and mother melodrama and Deadites, Burn is about how difficult it is for an outsider to integrate into a tightly knit family unit. And Deadites. This certainly works as a messy entry in an already messy series. Also there’s a lot of fire imagery, which makes sense as it says Burn in the title.

Alice (Souheila Yacoub) is traumatized as her husband, Will (George Pullar) burned to death in a car crash. Will was abusive and crummy, but his family didn’t know that. Will’s mother, Susan (Tandi Wright), and his father, Edgar (Erroll Shand) think their son was perfect while his brother, Joseph (Hunter Doohan) knew he was a jerk, but the grandma, Polly (Maude Davey), is too mentally addled to notice. The family, and Joseph’s girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan), arrive at a secluded cabin, supposedly to celebrate Will but they all seem aggravated and angry. What happened was that Will was killed by a Deadite – the Evil Dead that wants to swallow the souls of the living – and the evil was passed onto his father and is now spreading to everyone. In the cabin, there are possessions of the grandfather that can combat the Evil Dead as the day becomes Alice vs the In-Laws Literally from Hell.

In-laws conflict expressed via horror battles with the Devil was done really well in the last two Ready or Not films but this still delivers Evil Dead stuff, often with people turning possessed from human to Deadite and turning at a moment’s notice. There are a lot of moments where someone immediately turns violent, especially by Edgar, who shanks people and dogs, unexpectedly with scissors and forks. A way to make him hateable is to have him engage in Dog Violence which gives Deadite Edgar a Deadite Hellhound. There are a lot of holes in people and body parts and digits flying off. The rules for possession in Evil Dead films are always a bit vague but one rule is if one is wounded by a Deadite, or its goo gets all over you. One of the more twisted Deadite possessions in this film is when Thya plucks out Polly’s dentures, pops them in her mouth, and then puts them back in Polly’s mouth, which transfers the Evil over to her. There’s an excessively long and excessively gross kiss between Deadite Edgar and Susan, and she says, “You haven’t kissed me like that in years.” Very twisted.

A moment when Thya is possessed, after being stabbed to death by Edgar, is really sick as she grabs a candle like a shot glass and downs all of the candle wax. There are a few Evil Dead standard moments like the Deadites cackling “Dead by Dawn!” which is still really cool and evil decades later. The Kandrian Dagger, which was a huge part of Evil Dead II, is featured here although it looks way less cool than the one from before.  And while there isn’t specifically chainsaw gore as the series has been doing for years, there is a rotary circle saw that is still plenty messy.

Alice is introduced as a free spirit compared to Will, but it is soon revealed Will is a very bad guy with his yelling and nasty flashbacks. And the Deadites rub that in to Alice, saying that she liked it. Eventually there is a showdown between Deadite Will, who was burned to a husk so he comes at Alice as a charred corpse. There are really nasty moments of Evil Dead making things burn, like when a Deadite makes the water boil with a sucker caught in it. The first Deadite in Burn is actually the one from the previous movie, Evil Dead Rise, who bookended that film. That isn’t the only connection to Rise as the post-credit scene in Burn features an unexpected return of a character from Rise for a closing shock.

The film opens hard with Deadite gore and then slows for family drama with the dad infected by the Evil Dead. If one isn’t attuned to the very specific and twisted Evil Dead gory vibe it can get a bit wearying. Like in any Evil Dead film, even likable characters aren’t immune to Deadite possession. Aspiring writer Joseph hasn’t finished anything but he’s nice, so when he gets speared on a loaded dishwasher it seems excessively mean. There are a bunch of moments that play like something out of a classic Evil Dead movie but levels up the gore. If one wants messy Deadite stuff, Evil Dead Burn delivers.