Full admission: I’m one of those people who believe the last truly worthy “Evil Dead” movie was “Army of Darkness,” released 34 years ago. I didn’t care for Fede Álvarez’s “Evil Dead” (2013) or Lee Cronin’s “Evil Dead Rise,” which turned the franchise into an uninvolving, blood-soaked playground. It’s just not the same without Ash.
At this point, should we even be calling these “Evil Dead” movies? Beyond the Necronomicon, and Deadites, there’s increasingly little connecting these modern entries to the anarchic spirit that made Sam Raimi’s original trilogy such singular horror.
“Evil Dead Burn,” releasing on Friday, has yet another young filmmaker, Sébastien Vaniček, taking a crack at the IP, and he basically sucks the mischievous energy out of it — this is a vicious, punishing experience built around fear, pain, and emotional unease. There’s a particularly brutal death involving a dinner fork. Another one involving mutilation and impalement. The violence is designed less as cartoonish splatter and more as a deliberately uncomfortable form of realism.
The reviews are fine. The embargo lifted this afternoon, and “Evil Dead Burn” currently sits at 58 on Metacritic and 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s not close to a homerun, more like a hit single — a film with no purpose that sets out to brutalize, and does.
The gist of “Evil Dead Burn” is that a grieving widow, Alice, reunites with her late husband’s troubled family, only for their already fractured relationships to be torn apart when the deadly forces of the Necronomicon return. Alice eventually has to confront not only the supernatural evil, but also the dark secrets surrounding her husband and his family.
“Evil Dead Burn” stars Souheila Yacoub as Alice, alongside Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Tandi Wright, and Erroll Shand. Directed by Sébastien Vaniček and co-written with Florent Bernard, is a harsher, and more intimate style of horror compared to the last few instalments. Cinematographer Philip Lozano captures the chaos with a raw visual approach through striking compositions and relentless camera movement.
Vaniček and Lozano’s plan is to reshape the mythology with a more personal sense of horror. There’s a relentless rhythm to the film, with shaky handheld shots, sudden camera movements, and long takes that make every violent moment feel painfully immediate. It’s certainly not a boring movie to watch, but too numbing, too self-serious to fully work. This is not what Raimi’s ‘Evil Dead’ franchise was ever about.
As an exploitative horror film, torture porn, if you will, it somewhat works, but you don’t care an iota about any of the characters. This is essentially a rollercoaster of torture — which, truth be told, will be a turn-on for some viewers. I found it numbing, and devoid of the spirit that made the first three so infectiously bonkers.
Not more than 24 hours later, Guy Ritchie’s role offer to Markle has now reportedly been withdrawn. The story goes that they don’t want her in the show anymore “after intense backlash in the U.K.”