From Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, to Curry Barker’s Obsession, to Sam Raimi’s Send Help, and Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, 2026 has had no shortage of gloppy, gory carnage for horror fans. But graphic violence and buckets of blood alone aren’t enough to make for a satisfying or even scary film. Sadly, the team behind Evil Dead Burn missed the memo, which is wild because Raimi and Cronin are both producers on this one.
Evil Dead Burn director Sébastien Vaniček broke through in 2023 with Infested, a goosebump-inducing creature feature about a wickedly aggressive nest of spiders taking over an apartment building. For his crack at the Evil Dead franchise, Vaniček reteamed with his Infested co-writer Florent Bernard, crafting a story similarly vicious, violent, and thin on character development.
However, since the 2013 Fede Álvarez reboot of Evil Dead, the ties to the original trilogy have gotten thinner and thinner as this franchise limps along. Yes, the evil dead rise, beckoned by an ancient artifact. They cause chaos and lots of grisly assaults on everyday friends and family. And they may be beaten down, but they’re never truly out — not as long as audiences will still come to theaters to see the barrage of blood, guts, and bile.
What is lost in these subsequent sequels are the humor and heart that Raimi and his leading man Bruce Campbell (also a producer on this sequel) brought to the original trilogy, to thrilling effect. Those movies were wild, not only for their outrageous violence but also for the sheer glee of their audacity.
Decades later, I can still remember the shock of seeing those trees chasing after Cheryl, the thrill of seeing Ash battle with himself in the mirror, and the excitement when his chainsaw arm revs into action. Yet all the sequels that followed lack this macabre silliness. This twisted glee keeps Raimi’s filmmaking fresh even in 2026. (Again, see Send Help.) Without it, no matter what edgy horror filmmaker they plug and play into the franchise, the result is a sequel that feels tedious, gray, and soulless.
What’s Evil Dead Burn about?
A Deadite stands on a boat in “Evil Dead Burn.”
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Vaniček and Bernard thrust audiences into a nondescript rural vacation home, where an American family is grieving the loss of their eldest son, Will (George Pullar). With some help from a Deadite, Will dies in a car accident after fleeing a public argument with his French wife Alice (Souheila Yacoub) at their — uh — restaurant.
Okay, to be clear, his mom Susan (Tandi Wright) insists it’s a restaurant. But the only scene set there begins with an extreme close-up on a Black woman’s behind as she shakes it for the camera, which then tilts up to reveal a packed dance floor, flooded with writhing bodies, red mood lighting, and loud music. So, does Susan not know her son as well as she thinks she does? Or is Will’s restaurant less about the French cuisine he reportedly adored and more about overpriced cocktails and nightclub vibes? It doesn’t really matter because nothing in Evil Dead Burn does.
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These movies are about the hapless folks who are plagued by Deadites, usually through an idle mistake or no fault of their own. Raimi has made magic with this premise even beyond the franchise. (Drag Me to Hell is still a wild ride.) In the case of Evil Dead Burn, Will’s younger brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan) accidentally unearths a hidden artifact that awakens the evil dead. How? Well, he was doing research for his novel, of course!
Maude Davey in “Evil Dead Burn.”
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Yes, it’s a cliché that the sensitive guy is an aspiring author. Evil Dead Burn is full of such clichés, with little else to build character. So, we meet restaurateur/nightclub owner Will, who is belligerent to his French wife Alice, who we know is deep because she likes taking black-and-white photographs. And Joseph has a girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan), who presumably has interests beyond him. But before we’ll learn any of these, she’s turned Deadite. C’est la mort.
Also in the mix are Joseph and Will’s sneering mom Susan and glaring dad Edgar (Erroll Shand), and their one-legged grandmother Polly (Maude Davey), who has dementia. Polly might be intended for comic relief, but the closest she comes to a joke are bits about her memory loss and racism.
Souheila Yacoub is engaging, but can’t elevate this mess of a movie.
Souheila Yacoub plays Alice in “Evil Dead Burn.”
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Were the first three Evil Dead movies a mess? Absolutely. But Bruce Campbell, with a lantern-shaped jaw as outsized as his charisma, made that mess undeniably entertaining. He was electrifyingly alive in moments serious, scary, and deeply stupid. The vibe of Evil Dead Burn never allows Yacoub to showcase such range.
Instead, she is a woman gripped by grief and trauma, forced to play nice to in-laws who openly resent her — and then try to murder her with an array of homewares and power tools. Why does she stick around, even before the Deadite business begins? Evil Dead Burn will not even attempt to get that deep into a motivation. So, her in-laws spew not only spittle, blood, mashed potatoes, and more blood, but also vile sentiments about her and her not-so-loving relationship with Will.
There might have been a version of this where the barbs were witty in their cruelty, like in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? There might have been an execution where the characters felt distinct instead of people-shaped wallpaper, set up only to be torn to shreds. But Vaniček shows no interest in complexity, depth, or genre-bending.
The most lively moments of the film have nothing to do with the central characters. The film opens on a fishing trip, where two friends (Keanu Karim and Victory Ndukwe) razz each other before their hobby turns to homicide. Later, a carefree crematorium employee (Shyamal Singh) dances to a rap song while going about his duties, moments before being brutally slain offscreen. These are lively, enjoying laughs and something specific before being ripped into ribbons, which is more than can be said for the family at the film’s core. However, it is troubling that all these tertiary characters set up for early slaughter are people of color, as is the first victim in the house, whose face is battered until all that’s left is a row of teeth and mush of blood and brain.
Into all this, Yacoub brings a Final Girl resilience. To Vaniček’s credit, he doesn’t slide her into a skin-tight white tank top or otherwise offer an outfit that urges audiences to leer at her body, even as it’s being abused. Dressed in a simple sweatsuit, she wears her weariness plain from the start, even at her husband’s sparsely attended funeral. But as the family around her crumbles into pain or possession, she grits her teeth and drags us all through Evil Dead Burn’s grueling final act. She’s compelling. But a film so resolute in dealing in cliché and cruelty only gives her so much room to play, explore, or shine.
Raimi unknowingly built a sandbox in the 1981 Evil Dead, one he’d return to twice more, twisting horror into comedy, outrageousness, and epic action. He found his voice in those films. But given the same chance, a new generation of horror filmmakers (Fede Álvarez with 2013’s Evil Dead, Lee Cronin with Evil Dead Rise, and now Sébastien Vaniček with Evil Dead Burn) have delivered movies that are mean, ugly, and lifeless. They are more interested in shocking than they are provoking us to revel in the weird space where humor and horror collide. Instead, they are just a pastiche that lacks the color, creativity, and verve of the original trilogy. So, yeah, I’m bored.
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