The Evil Dead series continues with this, its sixth instalment.
Based on Spider-Man director Sam Raimi’s original trilogy starring Bruce Campbell as the chainsaw-toting Ash, which wrapped up with 1992’s medieval adventure Army of Darkness, this is the third film in the franchise’s 21st century reboot, a continuation from 2013’s Evil Dead and 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
The latter of those modern offerings seemed to go down okay with critics and long-time fans, the idea of wannabe auteur Lee Cronin, whose writer/director credit on Rise paved the way for his awful take on The Mummy earlier this year, with its completely overblown action sequences and thoroughly self-aggrandising title.
‘You know, without my family, I’m nothing’
We’re lucky, then, that Evil Dead Burn is directed and co-written by Sébastien Vaniček and Florent Bernard, rather than another vessel for Cronin. Luck only takes us so far, though – the man does still serve as an executive producer here, his appearance in the credits offering the film’s
most impactful and distressing jumpscare. It probably doesn’t do to pin any and all of the film’s deficiencies onto one man, but when this Evil Dead movie seems to be similarly mismeasured in its horror sensibilities, it’s hard not to try and root out the cause.
Allow me to stop burying the lead and instead let it rise up from the grave, one hand up to the sky, in search of bloody vengeance: I have, historically, never gelled with the Evil Dead franchise.
I saw the first two films just two years ago and, by my money, completely misunderstood the point of both of them, concluding that they were more funny than scary and were therefore bad. I’ve yet to give them a second go around, but after absolutely loving Raimi’s newest film, Send Help, this year for its sheer commitment to blood-soaked and wildly energised set-pieces, I think they’d skyrocket in my estimations.
It’s important to note that you don’t need to have seen the previous films to understand Burn. As with the other modern entries, it stands on its own two feet as another gory encounter with the titular demons (who prefer to be known as Deadites, if we’re being polite) and the Book of the Dead, the Necronomicon (hardly Raimi’s own invention – even the Minions are experimenting with that thing this summer).
This instalment centres around Alice, a troubled young woman mistreated by her husband, Will. When tragedy strikes, she soon finds herself shacked up in her in-laws’ rural home, with the whole family living in close quarters and things, as you can imagine, only get worse from there.
I don’t know that plot has ever been particularly high on Evil Dead’s list – the only thing that I could really see my younger self and I agreeing on would be the first two’s lack of characterisation – but even by the franchise’s historically low standards, the characters in Burn are surely the weakest of them all. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I walked out of the cinema and yet I couldn’t really tell you anything about them.
In fact, there was one character whose sole role seemed to be that of the decorative girlfriend to the point where I wasn’t even sure we as the audience ever got her name. Why, then, am I supposed to care when she naturally winds up in mortal peril? I was most concerned for the family’s German Shepherd, Max, which as far as I’m concerned is cheating – any filmmaker should know you get the ‘dog in distress’ card as a freebie.
I’d go on to explain the plot for you a little further, but there’s really not much else to say; it quickly descends into haunted house, zombified carnage. That’s not necessarily a problem – in fact, in the right hands, that sounds like an absolute blast – but the film has next-to-none of the wit that you’d expect to find in an Evil Dead flick outside of one or two blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sight gags. It’s a total gorefest, but a decidedly mean-spirited one rather than ever feeling all that fun.
It’s hard to explain if you’ve never relished in the like before, but proper, well-done gore can be a joy to watch on-screen. I’ve cited it before, but the Philippou brothers hit the balance perfectly with last year’s Bring Her Back, which had me unsettled and gleefully giddy at the same time as its crunchy body horror played out. It’s hard to get the measure of it, for sure, but I really wanted to see Burn pull it off and was disappointed to find an assortment of gory sequences that just felt cruel and over-the-top.
The film also manages to telegraph the ‘punchline’ to several set-pieces well in advance with all the subtlety of a freight train, perhaps to throw a bone to anyone in the audience who didn’t see the trailers.
I’m not convinced that the creative team where present and accounted for the lecture on ‘Less is More’ during their time as students of the Horror Movie University of Stomach-churning Delights (no doubt founded by Murnau and staffed by the likes of Bela Lugosi, Jack Nicholson and a pale, Japanese girl with long black hair). The film often goes for the loudest possible route (in, I’ll grant, the hope of making us laugh) but the result is a film that somehow feels neither scary nor all that amusing, so by the end, there’s little point to having taken its journey.
Thankfully, it’s nowhere near as skin-crawlingly overcooked as Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (to give that film its full title just one more time). That film descended into completely misjudged mayhem that aimed to be morbid and just wound up moronic. Cronin was too busy chucking red paint all over that project to force too much of his will over this one, but his bad influence (as an exec here and the director of the franchise’s previous entry) lives on, like its own Deadite come to kick up a fuss.
Crucially, though, the film is dramatically shorter than its faux-Egyptian cousin, clocking in at just under 110 minutes. You could definitely still chop more out of it, even at that length. (Raimi’s original film soared to far greater heights in less than ninety minutes).
But there are a few set pieces that do have a bit of substance to them (I’d try to expand on that, but it’s hard to give a concrete answer). Although mostly everything feels rather lacking heft and physicality, the film’s grungy colour palette was a plus, and the ramblings of the utterly dysfunctional family’s senile grandma nearly save the whole thing…
BBFC: Rated 18 for strong bloody violence, gore.
Evil Dead Burn is in cinemas now.
