Evil Dead Burn (2026) – Heated

Released: 10th July
Seen: 10th July

In 1979, Sam Raimi ran off into the forest with a bunch of his friends (including the chin-tastic Bruce Campbell) to make a feature length version of his short film Within The Woods. It was an insane idea made on a microbudget with effects that Sam made up on the fly, people got injured on set and for some reason they decided to strap a camera to a plank of wood and have two guys run through the swamp carrying it to get the shot. It was the kind of filmmaking that would make insurance agents weep and it ended up creating the 1981 film The Evil Dead.

Now that is how I started my review of 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, a truly brilliant little film that shredded people’s nerves to the bone and reminded everyone that this franchise still had a lot of life left in it. It took the deadites that have become horror movie icons out of their little cabin in the woods and threw them into the middle of a city apartment complex and let them have fun. It was an absolute monster hit, raking in over 10 times its budget and basically guaranteeing that there’d be a sequel. Thus we have been given Evil Dead Burn, a film that feels like it really remembers a lot about Evil Dead Rise and will be quite happy to do a lot of those moments all over again, much like I was happy to save myself a little time by repeating an old opening.

Evil Dead Burn focuses its nightmare on the Price family. It starts when oldest son Will (George Pullar) gets into a brutal car accident, albeit one aided by a slightly familiar deadite from the previous movie, and dies. At his funeral are his wife Alice (Souheila Yacoub), his brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and Joseph’s girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan), his mother Susan (Tandi Wright), father Edgar (Erroll Shand) and, lastly, his grandmother Polly (Maude Davey). The service goes well, albeit one weird little moment involving Edgar, and the family decide to go to a lake house they own nearby to just try to get through the grief. Unfortunately, that weird little moment involving Edgar actually ended up with him turning into a deadite and now he’s going to run about and do a whole bunch of torturing, murdering, converting and just general cruel evil deadite nonsense.

Cruel is a keyword for Evil Dead Burn, really for this entire franchise but especially for this film. It’d be fair to say that the biggest thing about the deadites is that they are some of the meanest demons to ever be put on screen. They don’t just want to kill, they want to psychologically destroy you before they tear you apart with whatever sharp thing just happens to be in their reach and that’s played up to the hilt here. It’s a cruel film where the evil characters aren’t afraid to be the meanest bastards ever for no other reason than they think it’s funny, which makes them absolutely terrifying. From the very first moment a deadite pops up on screen and delights in messing with people as it kills them, you know you’re in for one hell of a ride and this film delivers on that absolutely cruel insanity that this franchise does well.

It must also be admitted that Evil Dead Burn absolutely delivers in the torturous sequences that’ve made this franchise what it is. At times it telegraphs what tools will be used for carnage so obviously that it can be a little annoying (the second they pull out a pen you’re already mentally working out what orifice that thing can be shoved into for maximum impact). Still, when the moment comes for the deadites to start doing what they’re best at, it’s hard to deny how effective it is. You go to these films to see a bunch of demonic creatures use everyday items in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine, this film brings you that all while dancing around some heavy topics.

One of the big things Evil Dead Burn deals with is the idea of abuse, in specific it’s clear that Will and Alice had an abusive relationship and everybody knew it but really didn’t intervene in any way. It gives the film a relatable darkness that really helps explain the uncomfortable relationship everyone has and makes it so much easier for the deadites to do what they do best. It uses the awkwardness that comes with the death of an abuser, how their victims might not be sure how to grieve, or even if they should, but also just on how abuse can tear a family to shreds. It does not handle the subject with kid gloves, for those who have major issues with this kind of thing who know this franchise it shouldn’t come as a shock that the deadites make cruel tasteless jokes about the abuse (they’re evil soulless demons, it’d be weird if they didn’t) but just be aware of that.

Indeed, Evil Dead Burn is a film that doesn’t hold back in general; taboo-smashing has always been a big element of the Evil Dead franchise and this film is no exception. It’s honestly very rare to see an animal being harmed in horror films, but this one has a pretty brutal moment with a lovely dog so if that’s a hard line, you now know. Every death is violent, shocking and viscerally painful to the point of teeth-clenching terror. This isn’t like the insanely gory scenes in Terrifier that play out like a demented cartoon, this is grisly and brutal and as intense as it can get at times and that makes it work really well… just like last time.

Perhaps the biggest issue that Evil Dead Burn runs into is that it really feels like they’re just recycling what worked best about Evil Dead Rise. Rise started with a fucked up sequence on the lake that leads directly into the title card, Burn has to do the same thing. Rise had the main hero be a woman with a dark secret that she’s keeping from her family, Burn has to do the same thing. Rise had the cheese grater, Burn has a leg razor. Rise had the mother, Burn has the father. It’s so similar in so many ways but a much lesser version of what came before. It’s not like repeating imagery is a bad thing, hell the second movie in this franchise is basically a remake of the first movie but with an actual budget and everyone actually knew what the fuck they were doing the second time around. It’s fine to repeat stuff if you do it bigger, better, bolder than before and this just feels like it’s there because the last film did it but nowhere near as iconic.

There’s also just an editing problem that keeps rearing its head. In the search to maintain the stylistic visuals this franchise is known for, Evil Dead Burn will either randomly bring in slo-mo shots for absolutely no reason or something weird will happen when cutting from shot to shot, to the point where it can mess with some of the timing that the film had been working on. Some moments actually became less effective because an edit would make it appear like certain key items (say, a knife) have vanished into thin air. There are moments where the brutality is also just nerfed by the edit, things cut away from just when it was about to really get grisly and there’s a slim chance some of this might be due to trying to keep things in check for the ratings board, but some of it feels just like a bad cut.

Evil Dead Burn is still a really good entry in the franchise, though this would be the first entry in the franchise I wouldn’t be willing to call great. It’s certainly a really good entry with some shocker moments, interesting characters and a fair few shots that you can’t help but be in awe of as Evil Dead is just known for making some brutally beautiful imagery but it feels like a lesser version of what came before it and since Evil Dead Rise felt like such a massive shift for this franchise it hurts to see it take a big step back when it didn’t need to.