Evil Dead Burn locks in within the first opening scene, where rootless Joseph (Hunter Doohan), a wannabe writer, is having a hard time coming up with original material. What’s a writer to do? Well, Joseph investigates his grandfather’s old tapes and research materials that he’s found in the house he inherited. His grandfather just happened to be Joseph Price (Michael Hurst), part of the infamous Circle of the Wise Men, who were introduced in Evil Dead Rise.
Joseph ends up finding a canvas bag full of nasty treasures hidden behind the baseboard, which directly links us back to the now-familiar lakefront and dock in front of a cabin, where Deadite Jessica rises from water, summoned by the bag’s clanking. Jessica is the same character who cold opens the film Evil Dead Rise, though she’s now played by stuntwoman Greta van den Brink in Evil Dead Burn. Since we appear to be smack-dab in the middle of trilogy or tetralogy if you include 2013’s Evil Dead, I hope we might get more of her backstory in Evil Dead Wrath, which has finished shooting and is due to hit screens in April 2028.
After Jessica emerges from the lake with a creepy pop of her hip and has fed, she’s ready to raise havoc. A short distance away, Joseph parties with his older brother Will (George Pullar) and Will’s French wife Alice (Souheila Yacoub), celebrating Joseph’s birthday. Will’s a control freak obsessed with money and status, and he gives Joseph a thousand-dollar pen while negging him: “It’s to help you complete your novel in progress. What is it—five now?” Will’s wife Alice is obviously annoyed with her husband, but ignores him to give Will’s brother Joseph a black-and-white photo she took of him during one of his happiest moments. This sets up two of the themes that are being explored in this Evil Dead franchise reboot: dysfunctional family dynamics versus what are considered more traditional family values.
Will and Alice fight because he intended the pen to be from both of them and doesn’t like the extra attention his wife gets for her photo, which he attributes to the very expensive camera he bought her. The fighting spills out into the club’s parking lot, where Alice flinches underneath his touch, and it’s apparent that more than verbal abuse is going on in this marriage. Miffed, Will takes off solo in his car, driving drunk, and I was thrilled when he ran into Deadite Jessica on a dark and winding road. She causes him to end upside down in a ditch and, before he’s killed in a car fire, commands him: “Take me to your family.” This is the burn motif of the movie, which works well overall except for the last part of the film.
After Will’s death, we pick up with Joseph’s girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan) putting makeup on Alice, getting her ready for Will’s funeral at a crematorium. The rest of her husband’s dysfunctional family arrives, his frosty, ice-blond mother (Tandi Wright), monosyllabic dad (Erroll Shand), and batshit grandmother (Maude Davey, who’s a real delight in the film). With few words, they let Alice know just how much they disapprove of her. The emotional weather is high, but it does feel predictable. Awful parents raised a disrespectful son who abused his wife. He was the golden child while younger son Joseph is the fuckup, who can’t commit to anything and is scared of his own shadow.
Alice is set up as the film’s protagonist and our final girl, though it’s not a very original story. I do like how these recent Evil Dead films are centered more around women’s stories, but I think some depth could be added to them. The human counterparts to the Deadites are rather boring compared to how much fun the Deadites seem to be having. Given the choices, I think I’d much rather join their team. The body horror in Evil Dead Burn is excellent and relentless once the story gets started, only faltering near the end of the film. I love the exquisite detail given to the Deadite flesh, which is portrayed in a painterly fashion. Some of the makeup and prosthetic work reminds me of artist Lucian Freud, who was known for the grotesque way he portrayed human flesh. I could also see Italian giallo influences in the movie, particularly with the blood stippling that happens in some scenes and the eroticism displayed between two of the Deadites. When death comes, it’s made beautiful in Evil Dead Burn.
After a good amount of tension and stunning visuals in the first two-thirds of the movie, I found the ending lackluster in comparison. The “burn” in Evil Dead Burn begins with the car fire killing Alice’s husband and launching the family breakdown as members are picked off one by one and made into Deadites. The crematorium scene with Jake (Shyamal Singh) is so much fun and probably my favorite of the film, with Singh giving some of the zaniness that the original Evil Dead series is known for. But when the film tries to bring everything together and zing its central theme home, the final boss who Alice encounters comes off as oddly neutered. After so much loving detail given to the makeup and prosthetics for other family members, the burning Deadite that Alice faces looked too CGI for me and not scary at all. I think going hyperrealistic with the burns would have played better with makeup and prosthetics like those used in HBO’s medical drama The Pitt.
Make sure to stick around for the two post-credit scenes, which offer teasers for how the next installment of this series might play out, possibly tying all the stories up. We have Grandma Polly, one of my favorite characters in the film, infect the next victim, and there’s a callback to Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), the scary mom Deadite in Evil Dead Rise. I’m curious to see how 2028’s Evil Dead Wrath might expand on these characters in an installment that’s going to be a prequel to the original Evil Dead.
