Evil Dead Burn review
Another good entry in a franchise with no bad parts. But is good…good enough?
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Evil Dead Burn
Directed by Sébastien Vaniček
Written by Sébastien Vaniček and Florent Bernard
Starring Souheila Yacoub, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Tandi Wright, Erroll Shand, Maude Davey, George Pullar and Tapiwa Soropa
Evil Dead Burn Review
There aren’t many franchises more daunting to join than Evil Dead. Five previous films (and one television series), all of which are very good at worst. Evil Dead Burn is now the sixth film in the franchise. While the series’ record for never putting out a bad movie remains firmly intact…Evil Dead Burn finds itself stuck dealing with that long, storied history of bangers inside the franchise’s resume. This is a good movie that is unfortunately surrounded by great ones.
The problem…if we can label it as such given this is, again, a good movie…stems from some odd choices early in the story. After a strong opening, Evil Dead Burn slows to a crawl for several beats too long. The issue isn’t that the movie takes its time introducing characters…it’s that it wastes that time failing to properly set-up its main character’s backstory. It’s odd. We see multiple scenes where it could have been addressed. Instead, Evil Dead Burn feels stuck in place. As if it is afraid to get into anything beyond a surface level look at broken family dynamics.
Which would be fine…if it didn’t take so long. Two long scenes where nothing is really advanced in a meaningful way. It’s long enough to make you wonder how long it will be stuck there. And, when the movie finally takes off in earnest, long enough to make you question what the point was to begin with. The second half of Evil Dead Burn is terrific. It’s full of deadite action and the brutal punishment you expect from a modern Evil Dead film. There are some jaw dropping sequences to look forward to…provided you make it past those long, awkward, and ultimately meaningless scenes.
Alice (Souheila Yacoub) is our main character in Evil Dead Burn. She becomes the center of the story when her husband dies by deadite means. The deadites are looking for his family…because they have something they want. It’s the most purposeful that the deadites have been in one of these movies…and it connects to lore established by the series. Alice has some backstory with her late husband that makes her experience with his death very different than that of his family. The issue with the early middle of Evil Dead Burn stems from its failure to properly establish what Alice’s backstory is. Instead of giving us set-ups that will pay off beautifully by the end…it buries them in random, brief flashbacks and focuses on her interactions with his family. Those are concepts you can grasp in about two minutes. Evil Dead Burn commits well over twenty.
Fortunately, Evil Dead Burn does eventually shake off the tedium and delivers big time Evil Dead thrills. I’ve seen some chatter that the movie lacks comedic moments…but I laughed out loud several times during the film. The overall tone of the movie is dark and the violence is brutal…but there are funny moments here too. Co-writer/director Sebastien Vanicek pulls off some of the coolest moments in an Evil Dead film yet. His camera tricks and surprising movements are, perhaps, the best homage to Sam Raimi’s original trilogy that anyone has pulled off yet. Raimi’s camera did some wild things in his films. Vanicek’s style is a perfect fit for the material.
The main thing people probably care about when it comes to an Evil Dead film is the violence. Evil Dead Burn provides a ton of it. It has some new weaponry at its disposal…while also cleverly winking at the tools of the franchise’s past. Those looking for some new deadite thrills will find plenty to like here. There are too many wild moments of sudden violence to count…and they almost all land with perfection.
Alice’s story is a decent one too…despite the movies hesitance to focus on it. It’s a little frustrating in retrospect that the movie wasted the opportunities to push it to the front that it did. Some stronger connective tissue would have made some later moments in the story land even better. She’s on a personal journey to deal with what this loss means to her…and Evil Dead Burn would rather show you how she interacts with others. It lessens the impact of her journey’s end…and wastes too much time at the beginning of this movie. Evil Dead Burn soars once it fixes its focus in the right direction. It’s just too late for it to join the rest of the franchise in the A tier or higher.
Scare Value
The violence is brutal. The deadite action is frantic. When Evil Dead Burn commits itself to being an Evil Dead movie…it packs as good of a punch as any other entry. Unfortunately, the implementation of its story is too sloppily done to measure up as an overall feature. Cut twenty minutes out of the first act…or, at least, focus it on what truly matters…and Evil Dead Burn might have found its way to the level of the other previous post-Raimi films. Burn still reaches those heights. It simply can’t sustain them for its too long runtime.
3/5
Evil Dead Burn Link
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