With the release of Evil Dead Burn, there are now just as many Evil Dead movies not directed by Sam Raimi or starring Bruce Campbell as there are entries with that original team in place. The next film, Evil Dead Wrath, is already set for a 2028 release, when it will officially tip the balance toward non-Raimi film-makers. And unlike the non-James Cameron Terminators or the Spielberg-free Jaws sequels, these post-Raimi Evil Dead movies (which retain the director’s services as a seemingly enthusiastic producer) have so far enjoyed box office success, decent critical notices, and appreciation from their horror fanbase.
Yet all three of the post-Raimi Evil Deads still feel as if they take place in the shadows of what came before – specifically, the original 1983 indie horror classic about a bunch of young people who stumble upon the Book of the Dead in a cabin and accidentally unleash demonic hell upon themselves. The reasoning must be that with so many dopey horror comedies failing to competently imitate the splattery slapstick of Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness, and with Ash’s story continued in a three-season TV series, a new version’s only hope is to recapture the nasty (and, yes, sometimes darkly comic) transgressions of the first film. Evil Dead Burn comes closer than the others so far – though maybe not close enough to obliterate the comparisons entirely.
Evil Dead Burn isn’t a direct sequel to 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, but it begins with the same lakeside setting as that film’s introduction, linking this similarly family-centric story to the earlier entry. (A post-credits scene draws a closer, albeit somewhat pointless, connection.) After a gruesome crash, Alice (Souheila Yacoub) loses her husband, William (George Pullar). Though it comes as a shock, she may not be as devastated as his family expects, for reasons strongly hinted early on and developed further throughout the film. Yacoub makes a fine, moody anchor, even if she never gets her shot at Bruce Campbell-style square-jawed clowning. The major change the non-Raimi Evil Dead movies have in common is their attempt to flesh out the characters – before stripping that flesh away in various undead skirmishes.
Alice’s brother-in-law, Joseph (Hunter Doohan), and his girlfriend, Thya (Luciane Buchanan), are more sympathetic to Alice’s situation than William and Joseph’s forbidding parents, Susan (Tandi Wright) and Edgar (Erroll Shand). But everyone tries to stay barely-polite for an ill-advised post-funeral gathering at a dilapidated family home that has been passed down to the unsuccessful Joseph. It almost comes as a relief – to the audience, anyway, who isn’t seated for a dreary family drama – when the seething tension is brought past a boiling point by the conversation of key characters to Deadites, the series’ voracious cross between zombies and the demonically possessed.
As producers, Raimi and his longtime collaborator Rob Tapert seem eager to give relatively unknown film-makers a shot at Evil Dead; Burn’s French director and co-writer Sébastien Vaniček has only made one other feature, the effective but relatively little-seen deadly-spider picture Infested. In terms of ambition, this is a step up – the new movie juggles three or four enormously fraught relationships, even after some of the participants are effectively dead. In terms of gore, it reaches far beyond mere steps; as plenty have already pointed out, Vaniček’s bodily punishments (one involves a detachable car-seat headrest; another requires keeping an eye on who has a corkscrew – these aren’t spoilers because of the pure volume) recall the New French Extremity horror films of the early 2000s in their relentless flinch tests. Name a body part whose injury gives you anxiety, and Evil Dead Burn will aim something sharp in its direction.
Raimi’s Evil Dead movies are plenty gory, but even the less comedic first entry relies on a certain level of cartoon abstraction; the worst stuff often happens to bodies that are already lost to the Deadites and don’t register as human. Vaniček’s violence hits closer to home, with the dark flow of viscera often providing the only color in a sea of mud-puddle grayness (though that shifts to a more painterly palette in the grand finale). In its predecssor Evil Dead Rise, a grimy sensibility (and a willingness to kill off kids) muted any hope for memorably black-humored punctuation; most of that movie’s attempts at fun felt like clunky fan service in the midst of a bleak no-exit scenario. So it’s impressive that Vaniček does find room for laughs that start out mildly dark, as with the guttural construction noises that interrupt a eulogy, and ratchet up to bloodlustier levels, and when the movie knowingly gooses the audience’s impatience over when Chekov’s weed-whacker will finally be fired up.
While much of the horror action proceeds at more of a dutiful march than a Raimi-esque sprint, Vaniček and cinematographer Philip Lozano pull off some clever technical moves, whether pivoting with the characters until they’re on the ceiling or pulling back for unbroken shots that invert Raimi’s pinballing-camera technique to observe knock-down, drag-out fights from a limited location, emphasizing the scope of mayhem. The writers also succeed in giving the undead versions of the characters differently malevolent personalities, a novelty that makes the Deadites less chaotic and more strategic than past incarnations. It’s a tradeoff befitting a movie that does ultimately want to engage with the psychology of abusive relationships and long-festering family-inflicted wounds in between the gleeful exploitation stuff.
On that level, the movie works better than its predecessor. It also feels more like Vaniček is fine-tuning an entirely different formula than what powers the original trilogy. As generous as it is that Raimi wants to share his first success with others, he’s also passing around a series made in his image, tailored to his strengths as a young film-maker. Maybe that’s why less extreme Raimi movies like Drag Me to Hell and Send Help nonetheless feel truer to the Evil Dead spirit than these officially branded companions. The new movies feel like Deadites themselves: too lively to be considered a zombie franchise, but not quite alive, either.
Evil Dead Burn is out in Australian cinemas on 9 July and in the UK and US on 10 July
