It is truly amazing to me that not only has the Evil Dead franchise been going for forty-five years, but that it still has not produced anything close to a stinker.
The nearest it has ever gotten was when season three of Ash vs the Evil Dead had to pretend that season two ended up being nonsense – and we are now firmly in the true renascence period of the series, with a remake that is rightly held up as one of the best horror films of the 2010s, and Evil Dead Rise tweaking the formula by bringing the Deadites from the woods to an apartment building. Both are superb, which meant that there was a lot of pressure on Evil Dead Burn, which took us back to the cabin in the woods with a family reunion following the death of the abusive husband of Alice (Shohelia Yacoub). Directed by Sébastien Vaniček whose best known for his arachnid horror Infested, I was hoping to see him bring that feeling of infestation to his entry into the franchise – and he did, in style.
When it comes to horror, we are not asking for wholesale changes: of the Deadites contemporaries, Freddie will still be killing teenagers in either of his two warring productions (the one that gets Robert Englund’s cameo is the winner), Michael went back to terrorise Haddonfield, and you better believe blood, gore, and teenage sex and death is going to fly in the upcoming show about Camp Crystal Lake. And Evil Dead Rise doesn’t show any signs of moving away from the franchise’s central tenants – which is to say, the most absurd amount of splatter you can pile into a horror movie and still get a mainstream release.
But it does take a different approach to getting us there. Much like the remake and Evil Dead Rise, Burn chooses to ground the story in character and tension before the Deadites show up. The trick this time is a complete lack of sympathy for most of the characters. The remake was full of well-meaning family and friends trying to help one of them through detox, Rise it was a poverty-stricken family moving out of a home they could no longer afford. In comparison: most of the characters in Evil Dead Burn (and I mean this in terms of pure entertainment) deserve the Deadites.
This could have been a big problem – after all, the only person you are not meant to feel sorry for is Ash; not that you shouldn’t, he just doesn’t need it. The Deadites are the unrepentant bullies of the horror genre, and it feels weird to be on their side for so much of this as they terrorise the enabling family of Alice’s abusive ex-husband. What it does offer is the opportunity to just watch them work. For all the lack of sympathy for most of the characters, it is replaced with the sheer creativity on show from Vaniček who treats this grieving family as if they were auditioning for victims in The Raid films.
The set pieces are what sets Evil Dead Burn apart from the previous standalone entries. Sébastien Vaniček has used his success as an excuse to go completely insane with the action. Much like Army of Darkness, this sixth entry is more of a technical marvel than a fully realised horror movie. Which is exactly what he should be doing – while we don’t need anyone reinventing the blood-spattered wheel here, we need these little tweaks to keep the formula from collapsing. And, with Evil Dead Wrath coming to us in 2028, I’m looking forward to seeing what franchise newbie Francis Galluppi will bring to proceedings.
If you enjoyed this article and want to see more stuff like it, please consider supporting us on Ko-Fi, and check out the rest of the Evil Dead retrospective series here!
By Kevin Boyle
Header image: starburstmagazine
No But Listen 