Evil Dead Burn... burns like hell.
the franchise has a new champion
Being a hardcore horror fan, especially in today’s climate of the genre, so lacking in genuine real shit cinema. It’s quite rare to be treated by sitting down in theaters to see a movie that recodes your DNA as a horror fan.
Evil Dead Burn… burns like fucking hell. It’s incredible, and it’s fucking insane.
First of all, I need to explain something. I bleed Evil Dead. It’s my favorite franchise in existence in any genre. Not only in horror, it’s my favorite media period.
I’ve been waiting to watch EVIL DEAD BURN since Burn and Wrath got greenlit once RISE proved itself as the most successful entry to the franchise, in the box office. Like most Evil Dead fans, as soon as the newest movie is over you are already feening for a new one.
I walked out of Rise already thinking about the next sequel.
The first teaser for Burn came out, eight months ago. It was a fifteen second clip that hit Instagram, YouTube reels and probably over on Shit-Tok too. The clip was of some young dude screaming as he smashed what looked like a picture frame down into an unseen deadite in a state of enraged mayhem.
I’m not sure how much about the story was available that early on, I believe we knew it was gonna be about a family again. But that was all that came out all this time even though the movie had been slotted for release this summer for well over a year, and I had my concerns.
Warner Bros. had been purchased by Paramount… so I was wondering if it had in any way affected the release, but every time I checked online, there was no such claims of anything being changed about the film’s release.
Reports were saying it had gotten good test screenings if I’m not confusing it with the reports I had read on Rise. Then… two months ago the teaser dropped.
Out of the fuckin’ gates I knew what kind of movie that was going to be, and it didn’t disappoint.
Boasting a continuous action shot of the titular new champion deadite killer Alice in a mad scramble crawling across the floor, as deadites and unspecified relatives from the Family from hell… are brawling all over the place.
You could immediately feel how this movie was going to be all out fuckin’ mayhem and the most brutal form of utter carnage. Which was such a good sign. The trailer only further clarified this fact, and I’ve been watching my playlist of all the tv spots and trailers ever since to build the hype train.
With July 10th fast approaching I felt a hesitance to get my ass up and go see it, it was a weird mixture of fear that I honestly think was my own terror…
Would it be as good as it looks? Would it further embolden the legacy of the franchise or be the movie they say finally ruined the streak and killed it…? But beyond that, it is my belief that watching the trailers indicated something about the movie that only in my deepest subconscious, was I really able to register.
This movie is going to frighten you.
Now, I’m no wimp. I’ve seen the most fucked up movies out there, or I’ve dabbled in the waters to know what is out there, when it comes to shit so sick it is not even film anymore, but something far more nefarious.
It wasn’t that I was afraid of the gore, or the intensity. I relished in the destruction and chaos of this movie. To such a degree I am sure the whole theater thought I was a psycho. Laughing in the front row of the top section, as bodies were torn apart like I was on the best amusement park attraction on the planet.
The reality is Evil Dead Burn doesn’t give you a choice, my mind was more than ready for the next entry to my favorite franchise, but my body wasn’t prepared for how much Evil Dead Burn… burns like fucking hell.
Before I go into specifics, let me tell you. The thing that surprised me most about the movie is the sensation. Once it starts, like immediately as it starts, it puts its hooks in you and never legs go not even once the credits roll and it’s actually over.
It just follows you on your way home in the car.
At one point, after so much intensity I found myself involuntarily stomping my right leg to release some of the tension building inside my body. That’s how fuckin’ brutal it is. A hardened ghoul of the underworld like me, it wasn’t an option. The movie makes you squirm and go, “Fuuuuck.”
Yes, I was the guy making audible reactions. I didn’t really give a fuck cause it’s my favorite movie series. Far as I was concerned this was a personal screening just for me, and the reality was I was the only real Evil Dead Fan in there. At least, it felt like it. Because nobody else had the same visceral reactions met by laughter the way I was.
Honestly it felt like I was in a large room of NPCs horrified by what they were seeing while I laughed gleefully in delight. Kicking my feet and laughing.
I live for this like this, chances are most of those sorry saps maybe saw Evil Dead Rise, or maybe they just bought a ticket cause they saw the trailer and think ooooh a horror movie, I like those.
You think you do…
I’d imagine this was similar to how audiences first showed up for Night of the Living Dead but got the birth of 70s grindhouse horror on screen. Expecting Vincent Price, or Dracula in a cape, only to see a little girl murder her mother with a trowel before munching on her guts.
Once I’d secured my ticket for the 5pm showing at my local cineplex, I began to get ready. Throwing some fresh jeans into the washer and shaving my face before going out into the world. Something I only do for special occasions these days… I have that writer’s beard caveman thing going on most of the time.
After showing I slipped into my black denims, put on a Tupac shirt of him throwing up the middle finger, and my trusty red aloha shirt. I was keeping it totally gonzo for this one. My trademark uniform.
I hopped in my Uber. It was an older guy. Definitely not an Evil Dead fan, he made the mistake of asking me what I was seeing and got force fed a sixty second summary of the entire franchise’s history.
He said nothing.
Sitting at a red stoplight he was eagerly trying to get through to get me tf outta his car, a red jeep exactly like the one David drives in Evil Dead 2013 drove by, I knew this was about to be fucking epic as shit.
I was ready. I’d been waiting three years for this one and honestly longer than that for my beloved Evil Dead to be such a mainstream hit among the casuals that we can get two movies in less than four years.
They used to make these things every ten to twenty years. Those days are long behind us now and the world is a better place for it. I jump from the Uber and escape into my local theater on foot. Trampling over a screaming crowd of general audiences to rush the hallway and reach auditorium 13.
I grinned… at that… and fondly thought of Jason Voorhees.
The arcade was populated by screeching banshees playing air hockey while strange looking alien creatures slurped from sodas in the corner in a cluster. I didn’t pay them much mind as I ran past.
My theater was dark and they weren’t playing the Noovie ads yet, so I whipped my phone out and started doing an intro for my YouTube short I’d post after I got home. Maria Menounos popped up and cut me off abruptly.
I sat down and started to watch the trailers for every movie in the franchise on my phone, I reached Army of Darkness before the real ads and trailers began and I put it away in my pocket. It was fuckin’ go time.
The movie was staring…
**SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT**
Burn opens with a killer scene, but only after introducing the core mythology of this new entry to the franchise. I’ll get to that later.
Two brothas, and I mean two Black guys, which I appreciated. Because even though they got violently eviscerated and boiled to a heap of mooshy flesh in the mud there has been a serious lack of melanin in the franchise for the most part, and I liked the fact I could see myself on screen. Even if only briefly.
The light skinned dude is giving his friend shit about taking a call from his girlfriend while they’re out fishing in the woods on a guy’s trip. His pal heads off to talk to her and leaves him by himself.
Multiple hooked fishing lines end up flying out of the water… and tangle him up in them by his face like a fish in a net before dragging him in.
I knew right away, this mf was gonna jam!
The female deadite responsible climbs out of the water and heads into the woods. I want to applaud the Crystal Lake usage of a basic motorboat setup that mirrors Alice Hardy’s canoe scene from the first Friday the 13th movie. But also, how it mirrors the opening sequence from Evil Dead Rise, while at the same time staying on theme with how the deadite makes the water boil to burn the second dude alive.
I must also praise the directing now. Sebastien Vanicek is a madman and one HELL of a fuckin’ director. His choice of cuts, edits, and overall story direction are why the film is a great as it is, and dude deserves his flowers for it. Bravo you insane Frenchman!
Dude smash cuts from a speeding car crashing into the deadite women to a big booty shaking on screen, in a neon dripped nightclub.
The character introduction scene being set, in a nightclub, is so fuckin’ French in the best way. And how French this movie is, was another thing that repeatedly set it apart from the rest of the franchise, and even other cinema right now, and was so refreshing to see. It gives the movie a signature style American audiences haven’t seen.
Our cast of characters are immediately likeable with the exception of Will. It would’ve been a complete surprise had leaks not gotten out. I heard he was abusive towards our new deadite killing champion Alice, but had that not gotten leaked it would’ve been a total surprise because none of this portion of the movie was in the trailer.
I saw the new Spiderman trailer and they legit showed the whole movie, it’s like they have to do it, so you’ll go see it, because otherwise it doesn’t look good enough to be worth your time.
Burn is the opposite, so much of the movie was not ever shown in the trailer and even the stuff that did hit the trailer, it only stood out to me more, seeing them realized on screen. Will’s death sequence is a definite standout.
The movie doesn’t offer time to adjust before the next set piece carries you forward as soon as that fishing scene hits, you are snagged by the film’s relentless intensity, and it drags you along to the final credits.
I won’t give a full synopsis of every moment, but there are many standouts to cover nonetheless. Burn isn’t trying to prove it is a new Evil Dead movie like Rise had to, it trusts you to already know that, and it shows it, without trying.
Burn is burdened by being the first new age reboot after a decade like Rise was, in the same way Scream 2022 did the heavy lifting so Scream 6 could run on its own you are seeing the same thing here.
The story isn’t being bogged down by necessary homages, instead it relishes in slight ones that only real fans can even catch. I also like the fact of how many homages there are to Fede’s Evil Dead 2013 rather than the original.
Burn very much feels reminiscent of both the remake from 2013 and the original film, and not the more comedy focused entries. There are funny moments even amidst total carnage, which is honestly wonderous to me considering how damn tense it all feels, but mostly it’s leaning into that straight edged 2013 energy with echoes of the original in terms of the classic horror creepy factor.
Joseph waves a meat slicer at Thya, like the one Natalie used to butcher her arm, the dog Max, reflects David’s dog Grandpa that Mia killed with a hammer, a shard from a toilet is used as a weapon. That scene specifically echoes the bathroom scene in The Evil Dead ‘81, and the bathroom scene from 2013 that recreated it, while also being a nod to the bathtub scene from Evil Dead Rise.
It’s in that clever framing that you see how Vanicek did his homework. I don’t know if he was being that deliberate or if his instincts for the franchise are just that killer, but either way I fuckin’ appreciated it. Evil Dead 2013 is my favorite horror movie of all time, so seeing it celebrated by a newer entry in the franchise was such a treat for me, it really was. Like I said… I live for shit, like this.
Vanicek did a real 180 regarding the mythos of the lore. The family from hell is not a random family that happened to find the book. The grandfather was actually part of some very Lovecraftian secret society of occultists that knew about the book and in that way, they’re deeply connected to what is happening now with the rise of a new evil.
I appreciated the nods to Lovecraft and how his fiction actually presents the concept of the Necronomicon. Which wasn’t even as clear in the originals. There’s even what looked like an image of Cthulhu on the pages of the book. The Book of the Dead was also more of a field journal than the other version of the Necronomicon to where I’m not entirely sure it is a Necronomicon.
It looked more like an assembly of research and scattered pages capable of invoking evil through the incantations, without actually being the true book.
“You’re all going to die tonight” and “You will be dead by dawn” both showed up as iconic lines from the franchise, at different parts of the movie. But it didn’t feel like an obligation line in Rise. Burn does plenty of its own tricks unique to itself but has tons of easter eggs to reward longtime fans.
Vanicek changed the way the deadites actually operate. The transformation is slower rather than immediate. The father, Edgar, starts changing as early as the funeral but only fully transforms following the soon to be infamous dinner table scene. His wife, Susan is even more interesting in that she becomes a deadite but remains mostly not evil for a significant amount of time.
I have to talk about this because literally, Edgar changes her into a deadite by leaning in through the upstairs window and “French kissing” her with blood dripping. It was so French I couldn’t help but grin like an idiot the whole time. Relishing in it like the director was just splashing “France was here” graffiti all over the franchise. Which is honestly fuckin’ awesome.
My recent return to the material of Alexandre Dumas and the recent adaptions of The Three Musketeers, made in France, was rewarded because I was already in the register of French culture and how they tell stories.
The usage of music and score is very immersive in the film. There are a lot of tidbits I could cover but for the sake of length I’m gonna gloss over some of those.
Let’s talk about Daddy Deadite, Edgar. This guy is definitely gonna be a fan favorite and has immediately staked his claim as one of the most horrendously wonderful and brutalizing deadites in the series.
This dude knows how to carry a scene, how to stand out in a scene, and how to shove a car seat headrest through his son’s girlfriend’s face like he was born to do it. I mean, every time he shows up you can’t tear your eyes away from whatever he’s doing while also being terrified of what he will do next.
His killing of Max is the moment, when shit really just hits the fan, but it had already hit the fan already before that. That was just the point of no return. His relationship with the family dog represents the rupture from normalcy that echoes in the mayhem that ensues.
I like how once Max turns into a deadite, he still answers the same call and whistle in this way that makes him feel more like the loyal four-legged companion of the family, even in death, more than marauding zombie Cujo. He’s useful for jump scares but dies mostly off screen and acts more as a symbol of the love the family shared than all the disfunction that comes out, in them becoming deadites together.
Thya is my vote for sexiest deadite in the franchise. Luciane Buchanan may in fact be the perfect women. I am totally under her spell, and she too is going to be known as one of the best deadites that we have seen.
Thya is the first one to really terrorize the family and everything she does is totally brutal and mystifying. From drinking the hot wax, to crawling on the ceiling. She is a superstar on screen that is sure to only become more and more of a sensation in her coming films. I especially liked the line she tells Joseph, “I was your first, I’m gonna make sure to be your last.”
Joseph, poor guy. He’s a wimp that can’t seem to finish the novel he’s working on. He acts as our “Eric” in this movie. He does not summon evil since it’s already actively chasing this family to hell as soon as the movie starts. But he has the most knowledge of his grandfather’s research that his mother told him to throw away but he didn’t. In that, we see the Lovecraftian influence on the new lore.
His beloved girlfriend turned torturous but gorgeous deadite, ridicules him for being too afraid to shoot his father to save her life, but more than capable of killing her to save his own. He brutally and repeatedly smashes her head literally to nothing but a gaping hole using the door of the dishwasher. It’s the same shot that came out in that first little teaser, and it will sear the back of your mind forever.
Granny Deadite is both effective, and frightening. Her dementia is reversed in a way that made the whole audience in my theater of NPCs groan aloud. Me included. It is her performance, that generates the most comedy. Mother, Susan is her caretaker and it’s actually her dedication to caring for the family that prevents her full change into becoming a deadite.
It’s only after everybody in her family has been killed and reduced to deadites that she too finally succumbs and attacks Alice in the bathroom scene.
Alice…
Souheila Yacoub was a former champion gymnast before she became an actor, she’s also a scaredy cat that can’t watch horror movies. When they played the sound of bone breaking at a press event, in France, she was squirming and nearly fainted. That said, she is one of the most fucking badass women in horror.
Recent standouts, among scream queens, and final girls, include Lauren LaVera in the role of Sienna from that killer clown franchise I refuse to name, and Meilissa Barrera’s daughter of a serial killer, Sam Carpenter, in Scream five and six.
Souhelia’s Alice in Evil Dead Burn now stands along the likes of previous champions in the franchise: Ash Williams, Mia Allen, Beth Bixler. She not only stands her ground but defends her agency from the oppression of her tormentors, and that makes a big impact on the story being told.
Alice is a very complex character, she is not passive, she defends herself against Will in the opening sequence that prompts him to get in his car drunk and then crash and die. But she was in an abusive relationship.
The family expects her to be devastated by her husband’s death. Given the nature of their relationship. She isn’t. This creates automatic tension as she arrives in town to attend the funeral and stay with her in-laws.
Her action ready “sneakers” are one of two iconic footwears from this movie, the other being Thya’s mud caked Doc Martins. I want to see a future deadite killer sport those Doc Martins as a nod to Thya in a future movie, or maybe Thya come back as a human form deadite, slaying deadites.
Alice is stuck in a place of trying to play nice but pushing back against Susan’s open demands for her to take over Will’s restaurant business. The dunner table scene acts as a catalyst for the bursting of emotional tensions and actual physical violence when Edgar finally goes deadite on poor Max.
She has this very cool bravado that’s understated. She isn’t cool, cause she’s trying to be cool. She’s just super French and sassy in a way that makes her alluring and at the in the same breath, very courageous in a heroic sense.
I like how smoking cigarettes acts as a metaphor for the “burn” theme, and doubles as something very French. Her refusal to quit smoking was one of the hangups that her and Will had in their relationship. Which echoes the motif throughout the film and in its final moments, once she crawls out of the literal pits of hell.
Souheila said her and Vanicek wanted to make her grounded and like a real person, and not just another “scream queen” which I’d say they definitely accomplished. She also said she’s not even a good screamer, and she actually doesn’t scream in the movie but only in rage, when she’s killing deadites. Her and Buchanan joked she was good at scared breathing. Like in that one scene when she’s crawling on the floor, terrified by the horror unfolding around her.
I expected a lot from this movie, and it delivered in every aspect. I put as much as I could into this, to convey everything I wanted to praise about it, and while some of it has surely escaped me in these moments of writing it. That is what Evil Dead Burn did to me. It burns like fucking hell…
My only criticism would be that in the final act, it loses some steam, but only because after going so hard relentlessly for the whole runtime finally wrapping things up feels like smothering the blazing inferno.
I like the choice to divert the final climax from chainsaw to something else, but I’d say Mia’s chainsaw final slaughter is my favorite, and I actually really liked the Beth final slaughter in Rise too, but I think Vanicek really just couldn’t play that much into the hands of the audience to go with the chainsaw. lol. I can appreciate that. Haha. It still burns like fucking hell.
Are you shocked… yet?! Get shocked.
CRACKED STONE OVER MISERABLE TIDES
I forgot this tidbit, so I decided to include it, after the fact, as a post-credits bonus cut scene. There are two post-credits scenes on Evil Dead Burn. Mid-credits, and then a whole other one, actually at the very end. Like they did in the old days. The final one after the full credits roll… made history for the genre.
It shows the lady that runs the funeral home from earlier in the film, and her young daughter. The daughter asks her about urns, and she tells her the ones she is looking at are ones nobody picked up.
One says: Ellie Bixler, on it…
I immediately knew what was going to happen, and started cheesing like shit. Ellie appears in the mirror then is released from it. She kills the little girl and honestly, I am against kids being killed in horror movies, it’s a rule of law that even slashers like Jason and Michael never kills kids. Not in the classic movies.
But seeing it’s the Maggot Mommy I’m okay with it. Lmao. They show the scene, then it says: with Alyssa Sutherland. As the last credit, revealing that she is in the movie only after showing the post-credits sequence. Which was exhilarating. Perfect ending note for the movie.
I was laughing in sheer glee because this was the first on-screen crossover between entries in the franchise there’s ever been. There was a largely overlooked end credits glimpse of Ash after Evil Dead 2013, which ended up being a foreshadow to Ash Vs Evil Dead, a few years later.
This was different. It was an actual on screen crossover cameo. The next movie is “Evil Dead Wrath” a 70s prequel to the original “The Evil Dead” but now with all the lore dropped in Burn, there has to be a crossover movie. I’ve been waiting to see Mia return, Kelly and Pablo from the show. I even wrote my own treatment for a Justice League of the Evil Dead crossover movie myself.
I also have a 30-page screenplay for my own stand-alone Evil Dead movie, called Evil Dead Rot. For when I get a chance to pitch it to Raimi and Tapert.
When I stand up from my seat, a small cluster of the NPCs are still there staring at me not blinking in horror like I’m some sadistic freak. They thought I was relishing in the little girl getting brutally torn apart.
I knew then, I was the only real Evil Dead fan there…
this work was authored by En Pandit Cole.
All rights are reserved to the author of this work - Jul. 2026. This work may not be reproduced in any form by outside parties that are not the author and without the author’s permission.
En Pandit Cole, Cole McCarthy is the sole author of existing works published by total shock fiction - Ink Runs Red. He owns, runs, and controls the SHockverse broadcasting network. Please keep tuning in!!!!!