Evil Dead burn came out in 2026 to mixed reviews.
To be completely honest, it’s easy to see why.
While I like the Evil Dead franchise, they have varying degrees of quality.
The 2013 is fine, and Evil dead rise was a fun twist on the premise… but this one is meh. And sadly not a fun meh.
Important point : the dog dies. Twice. So animal lovers, beware.
A grim subject premise
I didn’t think much of the OD storyline in 2013, or the father walking out in rise, but I never assumed Evil Dead to try and tackle domestic violence.
The opening scene is fun, and well executed. It’s gory, dramatric and puts us right back on track with the franchise.
It’s nice that they’ve been putting women as final girls in those 3 last iterations, but it dunks the mood with the surrounding topics they attach to them.
They have to overcome adversity, but there is no levity to it, aside from a few quips here and there…
It is just dreadful.
The reason the first trilogy works is because they were a bit random. It was a gore fest, intertwined with comedy bits. They didn’t make all the rights decisions (the tree scene) but it was just bad luck and a dumb crowd.
Here, the family setting, the dynamics, nothing is fun. And dear lord Joseph was a useless twat.
We follow them after the death of Will (killed by Jessica from Rise), from the funeral to their nearby vacation home, where he married our final girl Alice.
I could go on and on about how dysfunctionnal they were, about how everything boils down to patriarchy and abuse, how Susan was just a dumb devoted trad wife, but sadly, I wasn’t interested enough to care.
About any of it or any of them.
Distracted by consumerism
It’s decently acted, the gore is fine, the disgusting parts are still there (the dentures!) but in between all of this… it’s just boring.
It’s never a good sign when watching a movie when my mind digress to where I could buy Thya’s shoes because I liked them… It just means I don’t care about what I’m watching.
It took a while for fans to get on board with the 2013 one. Some people still hate Rise with a passion.
But at least, as stand alones, they work… They are good horrror movies, which happen to fall under the deadite section of your gore-fest marathon. They are still a fun watch.
This one is tame, it doesn’t explain much, it just holds a mirror to societal norms, dumps a bucket of blood on it and calls it a day. It was nice to see a Bruce Campbell picture as the grandfather, but it just taunted us with rewatching a better movie instead.
A deadite multiverse ?
The post credits scenes show Polly, the grandmother, contaminating more people as deadites, while Ellie from Rise (yeahhhh!) came back to kill the mortician’s daughter.
It’s possibly to show that the rat-king dismemberment ending of Rise didn’t fully work, and that Alice would need the Kandorian dagger to kill her ?
Maybe.
We could get a final girl showdown as well, as they are all canon in each other’s universes.
Mia from 2013, Beth from Rise and Alice from Burn could be in an all female fight in the next iteration, who knows.
But please stop killing pets for entertainment. No one likes it but the directors it seems.
Exiting the movie theater, I was left wondering if elevated horror killed the Evil Dead franchise…
Everything seems to need a bigger motive nowadays and gory fun doesn’t sell as much.
I’m hoping for a brighter future for the deadites, but can’t help worrying.
Bring back the fun, please. The universe is dim enough.
My review : 1,5/5 bats
🦇🥱🥱🥱🥱
(Picture a half-eaten bat here, the emojis won’t let me do it)