Evil Dead Burn Review
Evil Dead Burn (2026) Film Review, a movie directed by Sébastien Vanicek, written by Florent Bernard, Sam Raimi, Sébastien Vanicek and starring Souheila Yacoub, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Erroll Shand, Greta van den Brink, Tandi Wright, Alain Chabat, Maude Davey, George Pullar, Keanu Karim, Victory Ndukwe and Tapiwa Soropa.
Filmmaker Sébastien Vanicek, unfortunately, takes a usually reliable franchise and turns it on its head with disappointing results in the gorefest, Evil Dead Burn. A lot of what made the previous entries in this series work depended on having creative, sadistic killings, but this time around, the movie doesn’t have compelling characters. That means the gruesome bloodbath only works every now and again rather than consistently, ultimately undermining what was so imaginative about the previous installments in this franchise.
This film opens with a couple of guys fishing on a boat, and long story short, they both end up dead through a series of gruesome events involving a blonde “Deadite.” One of the guys ends up on the boat, dead with his guts hanging out in a scenario that makes the other man throw up before meeting an untimely demise.
Joseph (Hunter Doohan) owns a home on the lake and the aforementioned “Deadite” crosses paths with his brother (George Pullar) who dies after a fight with his wife, Alice (Souheila Yacoub). This catapults the plot into motion which sets itself in the house where all hell is about to break loose – quite literally. A dagger becomes the MacGuffin in the film as the evil forces seek it out to give the story a reason for its existence.
One particularly gruesome scene has the character, Thya (Luciane Buchanan), who is killed by Edgar (Erroll Shand), go after Joseph over a dishwashing machine as she hovers over him while pushing him down on some sharp silverware. Buchanan is really good at playing creepy when she becomes a “Deadite,” and it’s to the actress’s credit that the viewer wishes the movie focused more on her than it eventually does. Instead, the film zeroes more in on the Alice character and the mother-figure, Susan (Tandi Wright), who are far less interesting when push comes to shove.
Susan, luckily, gets a gross-out make-out scene that is one of the few highlights in an otherwise too graphic and uninteresting movie. That sequence at least has a creative edge to it as saliva is hanging in the open air between the two characters at the center of the scene. The grandmother, Polly (Maude Davey), who has one leg, also works within the movie to become an interesting force in the proceedings. She even gets a clever mid-end credits scene that is among the few highlights of Evil Dead Burn.
Sébastien Vanicek doesn’t have a sharp edge to this material, however sharp the objects that are used to kill people in the movie are. That’s because the film is too preoccupied with going for broke in the gore department. It’s always fun for horror fans to see a lot of gore coupled with a clever script, but this film is simply gore for gore’s sake, including the mutilation of a poor dog in one of the movie’s uglier scenes.
Evil Dead Burn had the potential to feature a worthy script, but there are probably too many characters and that’s why some of them get lost in the gore-saturated shuffle here. If the filmmakers and the scriptwriters cut one or two of the characters out, this movie may have been better. Of course, we need people to get killed off for a horror movie to exist, but the development of these characters is severely lacking in many respects.
There have been better Evil Dead movies than this, by far. It’s been a few years since Evil Dead Rise which ultimately worked despite its stylistic flaws. There has been criticism that some people are being too hard on Evil Dead Burn for criticizing it for its vicious nature. However, that criticism is quite valid. A good storyline needs to back up the gory images or else it borders on being overly exploitative. This movie forgets the meaning of what it is to be an effective horror movie and the reason it needs gore to be successful in the first place.
Gore complementing a good storyline can occasionally work when it’s done well, but in Evil Dead Burn, everything is just too over-the-top and there’s a dire sense of dread that sucks the joy out of it all. Previous Evil Dead movies weren’t necessarily joyful, but they had something clever and unique that made them enjoyable to watch. Evil Dead Burn almost sends the series up in flames, permanently, but Buchanan and Davey do help the movie (and the franchise) save a little face for now. All eyes will be on the next entry in this series to see if it can get back on track.
Rating: 5/10
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