Evil Dead Burn Review: Hell Is Other People

When Sam Raimi unleashed The Evil Dead on audiences in 1981, what was truly innovative wasn’t the unrelenting gore, or the mercilessness with which he treated its characters. It was that he added an element of Looney Tunes physical comedy to the malice, creating a truly hybrid horror-comedy.

On first appearances, Evil Dead Burn seems to jettison that sense of humor. It’s far more in tune with the stomach-churning graphic devastation of Fede Álvarez’s series soft reboot, 2013’s Evil Dead, which was arguably the purest horror film of the entire six-film cycle.

But incoming writer/director Sébastien Vaniček is actually closer to Raimi than may seem initially apparent to the plucked-out eye. However, he’s not channeling the chaotic mayhem of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck (wise, since he doesn’t have human cartoon Bruce Campbell to rubber ball around). Instead, it’s the dry physical comedy of Jacques Tati that seems to be the influence here, a certain wry dryness to the setup that still delivers a grisly punch. Whereas Raimi delivered gut spilling mixed with gut buster laughs, there’s almost a morbid whimsy to Vaniček‘s comedy. So when protagonist Alice (Souheila Yacoub, Climax, The Carpenter’s Son) staggers through the house besieged by the latest gang of demonic deadites, it’s almost like watching Monsieur Hulot stumble through his absurdist garden of delights in Mon Oncle. But where he found humor in every corner, she’s in a situation where every item that could possibly turn out to be used to bash, blend, rend, sever, smash, or slash human flesh is inevitably used to suitably stomach-churning effect. This isn’t simply Chekhov’s gun. It’s Chekhov’s whole house.

The unexpected sense of French social comedy is only reinforced by the setup for this latest instalment in the series, which depends heavily on social and familial tensions. Alice ends up amongst the evil hordes in the saddest of circumstances. She’s attending the funeral of her abusive husband, Will (George Pullar), immolated in a car crash and now being cremated to finish the fiery job. Yet his family despise her: Mother Susan (Tandi Wright) is the model of polite indignation at her very presence, while father Edgar (Errol Shand, Mārama) is seething that his golden boy is gone and that only his worthless failed author second son (Hunter Doohan, Wednesday, Daredevil: Born Again) still breathes.

There is an uneasy feeling that an Evil Dead film isn’t really the place to broach subjects like spousal abuse and family enablement. It’s not that horror can’t do that, it’s just that it’s ill-fitting for a series best known for creative limb severing. Luckily, Wright brings the perfect sense of maternal guilt and love, adding an emotional heft to her part that the film doesn’t necessarily need as a horror but from which it benefits as a drama.

For those interested in Evil Dead lore, Vaniček and co-writer Florent Bernard actually start tying all the films together. Prior to this point it’s been little teases, but now they’re actually trying to make sense of how Evil Dead and Evil Dead Rise connect to the original trilogy. A mythos is finally starting to emerge, and the only concern is that a post-credit sting might be one connecting thread too many, especially if they don’t end up tying it off at some point. Considering the next planned film in the series, Evil Dead Wrath, is a prequel due in two years, it may be a frustratingly long time before those threads are actually woven together.

However, that’s not really why the audience is there. What they want from an Evil Dead movie is more gore presented in ways that they can’t quite expect. This is where Vaniček is a perfect fit for the growing franchise. After achieving international breakout success with eight-legged skincrawler Infested, he captures that particular sloppy, gooey, mucus-drenched carnage that is the series’ trademark. There’s a fetid sliminess, a certain putrefaction that you can almost smell from the screen, and Vaniček understands how to evoke that stench. After all, the key to the deadites is that they delight in the terror from showing how a body can be (self)mutilated as much as they enjoy the mutilation itself. They are the showmen of demons, possessing corpses and debasing them as their playthings. Vaniček clearly relishes every blithe torture of the flesh he inflicts, especially since Burn also understands that no character can be safe – not even the adorable senile granny played by Maude Davey (The Dry, Only the Brave) with hilariously horrifying gusto. Truly, Raimi and Tati would be proud.

Evil Dead Burn

2026, R, 110 min. Directed by Sébastien Vaniček. Starring Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Erroll Shand, Maude Davey, George Pullar.

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

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