There was a time when an Evil Dead film was something of a rare treat. Sam Raimi’s original saga consists of just three films (and a great TV series). And despite the enormous popularity of the series, it never became one of those franchises that vomited out a sequel every eighteen months until everyone stopped giving a shit. Even the later entries have generally done something different, with Fede Álvarez’s 2013 Evil Dead remake dragging the series into grimy modern brutality and Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise transplanting the Deadites from the woods into a grotty apartment block. For a franchise that’s always been more quality over quantity, Evil Dead Burn does make me wonder whether we’re approaching the point where the Necronomicon is being treated less like an ancient book of unspeakable evil and more like a licence agreement.
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though, because the Evil Dead franchise has always been remarkably good at reinventing itself. The series has gone from grimy supernatural horror to splatstick comedy, medieval adventure, television and then back to vicious horror, so I don’t particularly mind somebody having another crack at the formula. I’m also perfectly happy with the decision to move on from Ash. Bruce Campbell won’t be around forever, and while I’d happily watch him play Ash until he’s ninety and has to operate the chainsaw with a stairlift, the character can’t be the centre of the franchise indefinitely. Not every series needs to continue forever, either, and if the people making these films eventually run out of ideas, I’d rather they put the fucking Necronomicon back on the shelf than keep dragging it out because somebody at Sony has spotted another empty release date.
For now, though, we have Evil Dead Burn, directed by Sébastien Vaniček, the French filmmaker behind Infested, and co-written with Florent Bernard. Vaniček comes to the franchise with a background that makes the pairing seem almost inevitable, because Infested was already a nasty little creature feature with a distinctly French sensibility. Here he takes that approach and applies it to the Deadites, producing what is easily the most brutal entry in the series. The director has described the film as the most violent and brutal Evil Dead, and he wasn’t fucking about.
The story follows Alice (Souheila Yacoub), who is dealing with the death of her husband Will (George Pullar) and reluctantly joins his family at their isolated home. There she finds herself surrounded by her mother-in-law Susan (Tandi Wright), Will’s brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan), his girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan), his father Edgar (Erroll Shand) and grandmother Polly (Maude Davey). None of these people are particularly likable, and they’re already carrying a fair amount of baggage: particularly Alice’s relationship with Will, which is gradually revealed to have been abusive. They all hate each other to boot, so the inevitable Deadite invasion only makes things less bitterly uncomfortable if anything.
The basic set-up is familiar enough. Somebody fucks around with the Book of the Dead, the Book of the Dead fucks back, and suddenly everybody is having a considerably worse evening than they anticipated. The difference this time is that Vaniček uses the family dynamic as the foundation for the horror, with Alice’s abusive relationship becoming increasingly intertwined with the supernatural violence. It’s a fairly obvious metaphor, but it gives the otherwise familiar Deadite slaughter a little more emotional weight, particularly because Yacoub gives a strong central performance. Alice feels like an actual person rather than merely the next person in line to discover that power tools are surprisingly useful in a crisis.
There’s also an interesting twist in that, whilst this film does have its own Book of the Dead, it isn’t actually what causes the whole shitshow to unfold. Instead, it’s the Deadite Jessica (Greta Van Den Brink) from the previous film who brings the evil with her, giving Burn a more direct connection to Evil Dead Rise than you might initially expect. I won’t go into exactly how that works, because it’s one of the film’s better surprises, but it does make this feel more like a genuine continuation of Rise rather than simply another unrelated group of idiots discovering the Necronomicon. It also means that, for once, the characters aren’t entirely responsible for reading the world’s most obviously cursed book and then acting surprised when the hellspawn turn up uninvited.
But really, all this is just moving the deck chairs around. The film sticks rigorously to the franchise’s (by now) well worn playbook. Vaniček is clearly much more interested in physical horror than the lighter side of the franchise, and this is where Evil Dead Burn really earns its 18 certificate. The violence is fucking vicious, with bodies being crushed, sliced, punctured, mangled and generally treated with about as much respect as a discarded chicken carcass. Household objects become weapons in increasingly inventive ways, and the film seems to operate on the principle that if something has a hard edge, sharp corner, moving part or electrical current, somebody is eventually going to be killed with it. There are sequences involving car doors, kitchen appliances and various bits of household hardware that make you look around your own home and realise you’ve surrounded yourself with potential murder weapons.
The gore is excellent, too, and there’s a strong practical-effects sensibility running through the film. This isn’t the sort of horror where somebody gets hit and then the computer generates a tasteful little explosion of blood; Vaniček wants you to see the physical consequences of what is happening. The result is probably the nastiest Evil Dead we’ve had, although “nastiest” and “best” aren’t necessarily the same thing. There’s a point where watching another person get their face turned into pâté stops being shocking and starts making you wonder if the effects department has some unresolved issues.
It also brings a distinctly New French Extremity flavour to the franchise, which makes sense given Vaniček’s background. New French Extremity has never been particularly interested in letting its audience off lightly, and films associated with the movement tend to treat physical suffering as something to be endured rather than simply enjoyed as spectacle. Burn borrows that sensibility, particularly in the way it connects violence with trauma and abuse, although it obviously isn’t going all the way into Martyrs territory. The result is an Evil Dead film that feels less like a rollercoaster and more like somebody has invited you into a room specifically to make you uncomfortable.
That brings me to one of my biggest problems with the film: it’s fucking ugly. I don’t mean the gore, because the gore looks great; I mean the actual image. Everything is drab, grey, desaturated and frequently so blurry or out of focus that there were times when I genuinely couldn’t tell what I was looking at. I understand what Vaniček is going for here: the handheld camerawork, murky photography and deliberately grimy presentation are clearly intended to make the violence feel raw and immediate, but for me they had the opposite effect.
There’s also an awful lot of camera movement, which works better in some sequences than others. The Evil Dead series has always loved its roaming camera, dating back to Raimi’s manic tracking shots, but here that energy is combined with a much murkier visual style. When it works, it’s impressive, particularly during some of the longer sequences where the camera moves through the chaos while bodies are being thrown around the room. When it doesn’t work, you’re left watching a grey blur having a disagreement with another grey blur and hoping somebody eventually turns the fucking lights on.
The film’s biggest disappointment for me, though, was how little humour there is. I’m not expecting Evil Dead II or Army of Darkness here; those films belong to a completely different branch of the family tree, and I actually liked the fact that the 2013 film and Rise took the franchise in darker directions. But Evil Dead has always had a streak of black comedy running through it, even when it was being horrible, and Burn largely removes it. There are occasional jokes and moments of dark humour, largely related to the character of Polly. But they’re scattered around a film that’s otherwise relentlessly miserable, and after three modern films that have mostly taken the same approach, I’m starting to think the franchise could do with somebody remembering that being horrible and being funny aren’t mutually exclusive.
Because that’s really where I think Evil Dead needs to go next. I don’t want another film that’s simply another family, another location, another book-reading cock-up and another series of increasingly elaborate ways for people to lose limbs. The franchise has been doing variations on that formula since 2013, and while Burn has some new ideas, structurally it’s still familiar territory. At some point someone needs to shake the fucking thing up again, whether that’s by bringing back the comedy, going somewhere completely different or just coming up with a premise that doesn’t involve a group of people discovering that reading ancient text written in blood is probably a bad idea.
That’s not to say Evil Dead Burn is bad. It isn’t. In fact, there’s a lot to admire here, particularly Vaniček’s confidence behind the camera and Souheila Yacoub’s performance as Alice. The gore is easily the most brutal we’ve seen in the series, the practical effects are fantastic and there are several set pieces that are genuinely impressive pieces of horror filmmaking. It’s also encouraging to see the franchise continuing to give new directors room to put their own stamp on it rather than simply recreating Raimi’s films with different actors.
I just don’t think it quite adds up to a great Evil Dead film. For me it’s probably somewhere in the lower end of the franchise, which is hardly an insult considering how strong some of the competition is. It’s nastier than Rise, more visually adventurous than it initially appears and certainly more ambitious than another generic Deadite slaughterhouse, but the drab presentation, repetitive structure and lack of humour hold it back. The final girls are also beginning to feel a little interchangeable now: another traumatised woman gets dragged through hell, discovers her inner strength and spends the final act fighting demons while covered in somebody else’s blood.
Maybe that’s the problem with making six films about the same book. Eventually everybody starts looking like they’ve read the same fucking chapter. Still, I’d rather have an Evil Dead film that tries something different and doesn’t quite work than one that simply phones it in. Vaniček clearly has a nasty imagination, and I’d be interested to see what he does when he’s not constrained by the expectations of a forty-year-old franchise. Burn may not have convinced me that the Deadites need to keep coming back forever, but it has at least given them another distinctive voice, and that’s more than most horror franchises manage once they reach this age.
So, if you’re after the most brutal Evil Dead yet, you’ll probably have a fucking great time. If you were hoping for another Evil Dead II, you’re going to be disappointed, because this thing has about as much interest in making you laugh as it does in giving its characters a painless death. As for me, I’d be quite happy if the next film was something completely different; preferably something funny, colourful and stupid enough to remind us that the Deadites used to be allowed to have a bit of fun before they started turning everybody’s trauma into artisanal mince.
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