The Evil Dead franchise is one of the longest running horror franchises, with the original releasing in 1981.

(c) Renaissance Pictures, Pacific Renaissance, Wild Atlantic Pictures

Callum Berry.

Light Spoilers.

Following hot on the heels of Lee Cronin‘s 2023 effort Evil Dead Rise (and I guess Lee Cronin’s The Mummy), Vanicek brings up back to a more traditional type of Evil Dead story. After a tragic death, a family plus a semi-grieving widow find themselves in an ancestral home — not a cabin, but a stately home in a state of disrepair.

The screenplay, penned by Vanicek and Florent Bernard, isn’t particularly good. The overall plot moves along fine but there’s a false-start in a crematorium which is underwhelming and a kind-of false ending which leads into the climax of the movie — a climax that is quite awful both visually and in terms of the narrative. Vanicek and Bernard seem to try to connect Burn to certain other previous entries, and it doing so just create a headache for the screenplay as we find tenuous connections being drawn for the sake of establishing some kind of Evil Dead Cinematic Universe (the EDCU?)

Erroll Shand plays a wonderful role as a grieving father (and unwitting villain) alongside Souheila Yacoub‘s Alice, the protagonist who finds herself navigating tense familial drama as well as the Deadite threat which causes the household to devolve into chaos. The acting across the entire film is pretty good, and the chemistry between the cast is decent, but I wasn’t blown-away by any of the performances individually.

Phillip Lozano‘s cinematography is good, with some striking moments making this film stand above an average horror movie, such as what friend-of-the-show Ed referred to as the ‘Saving Private Ryan‘ sequence shown in the trailer in which our hero has to crawl to safety as the home descends into hellish chaos.

The team made some creative decisions which just did not land; a forgettable score (though to me most scores are forgettable) and a washed out lifeless picture take the fun out of the one. I long for movies which looked like the original Evil Dead, dark but colourful and with visual impact. This one doesn’t have that. I don’t care if your red/blood pops on screen if you’re turning down the saturation of everything else!

Evil Dead Burn changes some of the rules, not unusual for an Evil Dead movie, but it gives the Deadites more agency, as well as a inoculation time, so characters don’t go right from Human to Deadite, there’s a transitional period in which they’re kind-of both, which honestly feels appropriate from a demonic-possession point of view.

I wasn’t scared by it, though some moments are tense and Vanicek knows how to set-up tension and keep it running through a scene, which I would argue is almost as important as ‘scaring’ your audience.

Not amazing, but not terrible. It’s a decent modern entry into the famous gritty franchise. We’ll see how Evil Dead Wrath turns out, and if the narratives continue to intertwine.

6.5/10.