Evil Dead Burn Review: The Franchise's Hot Streak Lives On

It's the year of toxic romance in horror. A "Monkey's Paw" tale of a fantasy relationship transforming into an abusive one ("Obsession") has broken countless box office records, and the protagonist of another spooky indie sensation became so untethered from reality after a messy divorce, he decided he'd rather live in the Backrooms than keep going to therapy.

The sixth feature in the Evil Dead franchise is the latest horror title to place an emotionally and physically abusive relationship under the microscope, recontextualizing the spread of the Deadite curse at a family funeral as the violent elephant in the room that has grown too big to ignore. The bigger, lingering question with "Evil Dead Burn" is whether a franchise this historically silly — where the original trilogy by Sam Raimi quickly moved toward slapstick comedy and medieval farce – can tackle subject matter with this much weight and still feel consistent with the gross-out set pieces and over-the-top splatter all around it.

The answer is mostly yes, but it still left me nostalgic for Raimi's defiantly non-elevated approach, made at a time when the carnage that unfolded onscreen would never have been made into an allegory for deeper trauma — or even Lee Cronin's 2023 "Evil Dead Rise" (that we also reviewed), where deeper family drama grounded the story but took a back seat to the chaos. There are still plenty of laughs to be had, and even more brutal moments that will generate gasps, but it offers far more space for introspection than anything that came before. I left satisfied, but the more I've lingered on it, the more I've wondered whether the original fans will be as warm toward it; for an installment in the most reliably nonsensical horror franchise, it's often as sobering as it is silly.

We're first introduced to Alice (Souheila Yacoub) having an inflamed argument with her husband Will (George Pullar) outside the restaurant they co-own; he drives off angrily but meets a fatal end thanks to a Deadite in the middle of the road, who wants him to lead it to his family. At his funeral, the Deadite gets its wish, starting its takeover by infecting patriarch Edgar (Erroll Shand) — not that any of the family immediately pays attention, as they're all distracted by the fact Alice didn't want to speak at the funeral, hasn't cried, and seems determined to move back home to Paris away from them.

Back at the rundown family home, where the widow had married her husband, we learn that in the attic lies diaries and recordings from their estranged, eccentric grandfather, an associate of Professor Raymond Knowby (Bob Dorian and John Peaks) from the original trilogy who was equally obsessed with researching this supernatural curse. Faster than you can say Necronomicon, Edgar starts attacking his family — and, pet lovers be warned, their dog too — while under possession, and it slowly dawns on the younger ones that the Kandarian Dagger referenced in the unhinged writings holds the key to stopping the spread.

Since the 2013 reboot, it's felt like each Evil Dead installment has existed in competition with the previous one when it comes to the sheer amount of blood spilled. Gorehounds will be satisfied from the lakeside cold open onward on that front, although this is a movie that gradually skews more straightforwardly nihilistic than darkly comic, never quite finding the middle ground that Sam Raimi perfected. Creative and disturbing kills like the car seat headrest impalement glimpsed in the trailer, or moments of gross-out bad taste like the late-stage Alzheimer's diagnosed grandmother Polly (Maude Davey) being infected via a Deadite taking out her dentures and licking them, are placed awkwardly alongside more brutal moments designed to act as a metaphorical extension of an abusive, gaslighting relationship. 

Director and co-writer Sébastien Vaniček burst onto the scene with his 2023 horror "Infected," a tale of a giant spider infestation in the Parisian banlieues that he'd devised as a social commentary about the xenophobia he'd see targeted toward diverse, inner-city communities like the one he grew up in. Alongside his returning co-writer Florent Bernard, he's admirably not toned down his more thoughtful approach to horror storytelling now that he's embedded within the franchise machine, but his instincts don't fully gel with the comparatively carefree slapstick nastiness of this world.

This is never an issue in the heat of the moment, as Sébastien Vaniček already has a proven track record of transforming a claustrophobic family home into an unpredictable house of horrors. Here, he's ensured that a deadly new obstacle made of the most unassuming household object lurks in every room, and that any trip outside quickly leads everybody back. It's confined but never feels constrained. However, it still struggles to tonally maneuver between finding a sincere catharsis in watching Alice fight back against a family who chose to ignore the scars their son inflicted upon her with the more joyously disgusting antics of the Deadites. 

The infamous tree scene in Sam Raimi's original "The Evil Dead" is evidence to me that he also didn't quite perfect the appropriate level of sincere-to-slapstick on his first try, and to Vaniček's credit, the nastiness in his film is always rooted in story rather than a quest to push the boundaries of good taste further. Six movies into a well-established franchise, however, and that uneven balance is more striking. There's a good Evil Dead movie and a good (if slightly too familiar) elevated horror tale of female empowerment against unbelievable odds here, but the starkly different tones needed to pull off both stops the film from coalescing into something truly great.

With all this being said, "Evil Dead Burn" does continue the hot streak of the franchise, which can now easily lay claim to being the most consistent in the horror genre; if the above review sounds like I'm being overly critical, that's just because of the high bar that's already been set. Most franchise producers would read out a passage from the Book of the Dead if it could help them make a movie in a long-running series that still captures the pulse of a modern audience, and the recent Evil Dead entries have made recapturing the spark feel effortless. It's one of the weaker Evil Dead movies, but placed next to all the other horror legacy sequels we've seen in recent years, it's the cream of the crop.

"Evil Dead Burn" creeps into theaters on July 10.