Evil Dead Burn Review

Review of Evil Dead Burn (2026) by screenqueeen: 👍 4/5

um. what a surprise ??? was led to believe this was devoid of any sense of humor and cemented (lol) in joyless, torturous familial allegories that were too real/more dour than anything else in some kind of natural step past the overplayed "grief as horror" concept. that idea of course has developed further from the misbegotten blueprints of "elevated horror," coined by only the smarmiest armchair critics and fartistic cinematic pontificators. in one direction this could have been relentlessly milked like a spent tube of toothpaste, wound tighter and tighter still with the perpetual expectation to produce, as if governed by a family that insists on using a resource to the absolute, bloody end until what they need is completely drained and discarded.

what we get here is the above but as the actions of a hateful, racist, sexist and otherwise nebulously bigoted family with their beloved favorite son disappearing from this world and gone to the next. i appreciated the way the expectations of abuse and trauma in the present and future still gave way to the shock of deadite nastiness. so many good set pieces, so instrumental with how each family member is used (grandma a clear favorite) that i am greatly disappointed in how dull the film looks in general, the color palette and shot composition barely more exciting than your average postcard. the kinetic camera movements are on the cusp of being too much but there is a variety within that feels sadistically playful with it, something i wish was tapped into much more as a route to the humor we do get from this iteration. this dark humor is squeezed out like that poor, defenseless toothpaste but in ways that feel like you're looking at a family similarly abusive to yours and seeing things that would help you cope, things that people who would describe themselves as carefree, jolly, bubbly or optimistic would and could not derive pleasure from.

i found myself laughing pretty heartily through this entire thing from the smash cut to a girl twerking in the club to Alice trying out every single edged weapon that could be the kandarian dagger (suggested by me in the theater as a joke but delighted to see it play out on screen) and beyond to grandma's epilogue, which gave me a nice permanent smirk that only grew after this film's final gift of child endangerment.

i loved how Vaniček subsumes elements of the entire series to actually create something that works in the world of what is still a very loose set of rules and events. the way the deadites operate are entirely dependent on the hosting person, their transference adheres to the logic of the 1981 film, and most importantly is that of a force acting in a special sort of reconnaissance. this is the first EVIL DEAD film where the book is never invoked and it never needed to be here. the biggest disappointment besides its unexciting shots, colors or otherwise wackadoodle moments (that people seem to really really want) is the empty nature of the final sequence upon Will's return.

after a great string of fairly electrifying moments and consistent, pitiless yet not unenjoyable gags, everything gets reduced to a deflating cgi figure menacing Alice and supposedly receiving the most cathartic actualization of revenge. in the wake of his scarring domestic abuse (when this was already doing such a great job of mixing practical and computer effects, why it skews so hard into the Peter Jackson of it all i could not tell you) this should mean something more but didn't manage to get anywhere with me.

but in expecting a mixed bag i found a lot more to be happy about, something that feels like a dark mirror of EVIL DEAD 2 that fits nicely into that black rainbow of horror where Stephen King so aptly placed Raimi's 1981 original. this is the funniest new EVIL DEAD we've seen and it's full of joy. i don't think it should take a depraved sadist (me) to see that.