Once again, we’re blessed with another gift of an additional entry into the ‘Evil Dead’ franchise. A series that, to this day I am happy to report hasnt had a single poor entry (in this humble critics opinion). With the latest offering being ‘Evil Dead Burn’ a more brutalist take on the franchise; probably its most brutal outing since the 2013 remake.

The plot follows French woman and all round bruiser ‘Alice’, a woman in an abusive relationship who’s husband ‘Will’ dies in a horribly fiery car crash. Alice and Will co-own a restaurant/bar, something which was much more Wills idea due to his love of french Cuisine, rather than Alice’s; who’d much rather handle the accounts.

Will’s death leads to a VERY unsteady family reunion with Wills Mum,Dad, Brother, Brothers partner and Dimentia ridden Grandmother all gathering at the families (now abandoned) Grandparents place. tensions rise when it becomes clear that the family are less than happy with how Alice has handled Wills death, and even more upset to find out that she doesnt wish to continue to operate the Restaurant/Bar.

Things only go from bad to worse, when Wills Brother, Edgar reveals that he’s been working on a book based on the life of his Grandfather, an explorer and archivist who joined a mysterious cult known as the ‘Circle of the Wisemen’ who’s aim was to research, explore and hopefully discover artifacts tied to the Necronomicon (Book of the dead).

As you can imagine, someone manages to find transcribed pages of the Necronimicon, words are spoken and suddenly Alice and the family are facing down immensely powerful deadites, who this time appear to have apperated with a mission to retrieve something from the house the family have found themselves trapped in…With Edgar holding onto some critical information that might explain everything…

‘The Evil Dead’ as a franchise is somewhat of a pendulous series, constantly in a state of swinging between utterly grizzly and bleak horror, and farsical comedy. Over the series entries such as ‘Evil Dead 2’, ‘Army of Darkness’ and ‘Ash Vs The Evil Dead’ have given things a much more comedic overtone thats helped contrast the ultra gory violence creating an almost cartoonish atmosphere.

Contrasting that, the original ‘Evil Dead’, the 2013 remake and now this entry drag the series back to its original roots. a brazenly unapologetic horror film that gets incredibly gory, incredibly nasty and positively gross in places. using comedy almost as a trim to help bring the series a bit more of a contrasting lift to make the next dose of ultra violence feel particularly powerful.

Now; Im just going to be honest here, I personally have a preference for the entries where they are unashamedly going for over the top cartoonish gore with a distinct comedy edge, over the entries where they play the comedy right down in favour of wall to wall gore. And this entry is definitely more in the ‘serious and brutal’ camp.

Thats not to say there arnt funny moments occasionally; but with ‘Evil Dead Burn’ they feel, for lack of a better word…’Tacked on’ like they were put there because there was a felt absence of humour. ..make of that what you will.

Instead; ‘Evil Dead Burn’ is a dark horror film dealing openly with domestic abuse, its impact on not only the individual, but the families who can be complicit in that abuse and the pain and suffering it leaves across everyone involved.

With that in mind the plot really boils down to two main headers. One being Alice’s relationship with Will and Wills family, and her processing of whats happened to her through the backdrop of a deadite home invasion. and the B-plot, which is the deadites actively looking for something in the house (which I wont go into detail here because, spoilers.)

But its these two plots that I feel are actually probably the biggest problem that I have with ‘Evil Dead Burn’…AND a broader issue that I have with this film altogether…see…to me?…this film didnt really feel like a breath of fresh air for the franchise. Instead it almost felt like a kind of…ground up ‘Evil Dead’ Meatball. The elements of Alice recovering from trauma brought up elements of the 2013 Evil Dead, the home invasion and isolationist elements (and the 3rd act finale, which again; I wont spoil here) all felt very much akin to what happened in ‘Evil Dead Rise’. there are beats that felt a little too close to the original ‘Evil Dead’ for me to say they were a ‘Homage’.

This entry DOES introduce a lot of new and interesting ideas for how deadites manifest and what they’re capable of doing. But at the same time, I dont feel like this entry really bought the series forward in any meaningful way…rather, it felt like it existed to reintroduce people who’d maybe only seen the last couple ‘New’ Evil Dead movies to concepts the original trilogy shaped out nicely…Only. I think the original trilogy handled it better than this. It feels rushed here, key information that was the basis of some of the earlier entries, are just kind of…haphazardly ‘cliff noted’ here. With no real explanation or justification.

To that end, I found the pacing to be a little slow going at first. ‘Evil Dead Rise’ had a similar problem, where they open the film with a particularly gnarly kill sequence, and then the next half an hour (of a 90 minute movie) is just setting up how the final 45 minutes is going to be ‘Awesome.’

It takes a good while for this film to really spin up, the act structuring is a little messy between the transition stages. And I think something that really goes against this film is the fact that the characters all feel…well…kind of flat. It would work if Alice was a flat and blunt character type playing off against a whole lot of crazy from the deadites and the extended family. Because it would be inkeeping with her backstory. But the rest of the family are also kind of unremarkable and muted, and when the time comes to kick into high gear, the performances really are a bit too subdued for my taste, favouring over the top gross out and gore to actually making me care about these characters,or even really to appreciate their deadite performances. They’re all just a bit…unremarkable, which is odd for an ‘Evil Dead’ movie as the series is usually hot on the button for giving us interesting or unusual characters/performances that help keep audiences firmly in seats.

What I can say however; is the plot is ultimately compelling, if not a little slow boiled, ends about as well as could be hoped. And leaves enough open that a sequel could actually really build and develop off of this entry. In fact; thats exactly how I felt about this movie as the credits rolled like it was the middle part of a ‘trilogy’ good enough to keep things moving, not really good enough to stand solely on its own two feet. (And with another ‘Evil Dead’ sequel tentatively penned in for 2028; I feel Im correct in that assertion.)

Outside of the script, the directions pretty solid, a bleak and chilling vision, I feel like Sébastien Vaniček understood the assignment to make this an absolute gore fest. and while I dont quite think this entry is as ‘splattertastic’ as the last few films (and TV series) it definitely had me wincing throughout, so i’d say its a success on that front. While it is a quite stylish film in places, I do wish this entry had a bit more colour going on in its directoral vision. Blacks, dark Blues, grays contrast orange and red…Which is fiiiiine…But its also very VERY ‘Done.’ especially both in recent ‘Evil Dead’ movies AND recent horror films in general. that kind of washed out, brown/gray colour grading that makes everything look a bit putrid is fine if it suits the tone of the film. But I feel here we really would have benefitted from a bit more of a colour pop. Instead everything feels a bit drab…and by extension, a little bit uninteresting sadly.

Direction of the cast is solid, the fight sequences and gore scenes are very well executed and Vaniček vision in terms of the camera work pays homage to Raimi’s vision, while also not being afraid to put his own name on this.

The Cine is also pretty solid, decently executed compositions tastefully arranged to form a fluid set of sequences that more or less hit the spot. Theres the occasional bit of CGI I wasnt a huge fan of, and the occasional edit that defied the law of time and space from a continuity perspective…but hey, im watching a film about demons from another realm claiming the bodies of the living…I think I can give it some gratis on that.

The performances, as mentioned, are a little dry. I dont think they’re bad performances really. But this is a much more subdued set of performances than anything we’ve had in recent years. Souheila Yacoub as Alice is probably the best performance in the film. a ‘Done’ French woman who didnt want to even be there BEFORE the film starts, finds herself dragged WELL beyond her tolerance level and then some. and I think its a pretty bob on performance for that. She really gets a good range to work with and the script gives her plenty of layers to work through as we get to slowly understand her circumstances.

Tandi Wright as Susan also gets a solid run playing Will and Edgars mother. a multi layered performance that sees her ranging from a woman accepting her daughter in law begrudgingly through the process of a full blown traumatic mental breakdown as her family slowly get attacked and picked off. I think she gives a blinder here and is probably the most underrated performance in this film.

The rest of the cast though?…well…theyre okay. unremarkable if im being honest. I dont like using the term ‘NPC’ to describer a performance. But a lot of the choices in this film make these characters feel very much like THE most generic horror characters i’ve seen in a long time…unfortunately. Again; they’re not BAD performances. they’re just notable for how little they actually feel they impact the main plot.

And as for the score? well…its a return of drone and frantic orchestral pieces. The last entry mixed the music so loud that when I saw it in theaters it caused visual distortion in my eyes. That was an intense experience. This? this was fine. it sounded like the last two evil dead films. and was kind of unremarkable because of that…Though I will say this entry (like the last one) does occasionally struggle with that plague of the 21st century, audio mixing that doesnt compensate for mumbling line deliveries. there were multiple points in this film where I basically just had to guess whatever a character was saying because the audio for their dialogue was SO deep in the mix as to be basically inaudible. One i’ll absolutely need to turn subtitles on for when I next rewatch.

All in all? ‘Evil Dead Burn’ is more on the generic side for an ‘Evil Dead movie’ at this point in time. Its still a perfectly fine and enjoyable experience that I definitely recommend checking out. But I dont think this would be one i’d be in a rush to rewatch…especially just on its own. I COULD see this being a more than welcome part of an ‘Evil Dead’ marathon at some point in future. But the lack of distinct/meaningful characters combined with plotting that feels a little on the slowburn side, and very self referential, ultimately left me feeling like this may be one that gets better on a rewatch, but is probably short of cracking the ‘top 5’ best of this franchise.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/evil-dead-burn/