Image: New Line Cinema
Cast: Souheila Yacoub, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Tandi Wright, Erroll Shand, Maude Davey, George Pullar Review by Colin Dibben
When Alice (Yacoub) goes to the funeral of her late, abusive husband Will (Pullar), she meets up with her in-laws again. Will’s brother Joseph (Doohan) and his wife Thya (Buchanan) are very supportive; gruff dad Edgar (Shand) and resentful mum Susan (Wright) less so.
The relevance of interpersonal relationships fades into the background, however, when Will’s charred corpse is possessed by a Deadite (as undead entities in the Evil Dead universe are known). It turns out that the family’s grandad was a bit of a collector of occult items: somewhere in the old, creaky family home is a sacred knife that can send Deadites back to hell. They want to get their hands on it – and so does Alice, soon enough.
Deadite begets Deadite, so, as the family members attack each other, the violence escalates. Alice is pretty obviously going to be the last woman standing, so it is time to sit back and enjoy the increasingly gory goings on.
The gore is outstanding, as is the frenetic pace of the violence. The film’s DNA definitely contains strands of recent French horror films like Frontier(s) and Inside as well as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and, of course, Evil Dead. The Gallic influence isn’t surprising – the movie even features Jacques Brel on the soundtrack! – as the director is Sébastien Vanicek, who served up spiders-in-the-banlieue horror Infested in 2023.
What is pretty unique is that Vanicek has been able to bring a certain visual approach, one that I consider signature to French horror films of the last 20 years, into a New Line Cinema/ Sony Pictures/ Warner Bros American picture.
The visual elements I have in mind include: the violence, which is really in your face; the sweaty, anguished close-ups and rapid almost hysterical editing, likely to give an audience a collective attack of the vapours. The injury details too have a gnarly credibility that is worlds away from the comic-book approach of Sam Raimi’s original movies.
Vanicek is also simply a good director, keeping things visually interesting as events develop, and using multi-planed action in the frame a couple of times to great effect – for example the scene where Alice scrabbles on the floor while dad hurls son around the room behind her.
The Evil Dead films have always indulged a passion for physical effects – as opposed to CGI – and that passion is very much in evidence here. Highlights include the father shooting himself several times in the head, Joseph’s head being smashed into the caved-in face of a Deadite and – a signature of the film series – petrol powered garden tools being used in ways that their manufacturers would never condone.
I found 2023’s Evil Dead Rise a slightly too sober, even boring film. Evil Dead Burn does the right thing for the Evil Dead franchise, delivering on all fronts. But, be warned, this is a very gory film.
Evil Dead Burn is out in cinemas from 9 July 2026.
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