The Evil Dead franchise has been a staple of the horror genre for 45 years. Starting with Sam Raimi's original, The Evil Dead, he redefined what a small budget can accomplish - with its $375,000 budget, or $1.3-1.5 million adjusted for inflation - and revolutionised supernatural cinema through its extreme visceral gore. While it did contain a few comedic elements, Evil Dead II dove headfirst into the modern horror-comedy, almost defining it with its over-the-top gore and slapstick comedy, leading perfectly into Army of Darkness's Monty Python- style.
After the fever dream that was Army of Darkness, the franchise lay dormant for 21 years until Fede Álvarez emerged with his take on the original film, this time layered with themes of substance abuse and withdrawal as well as cyclical trauma. While this was given mixed reviews, it's clear that this took the source material much more seriously than Raimi himself ever did. Once again, we waited another 10 years for another instalment, this time headed up by Lee Cronin. Evil Dead Rise seemed to focus so much more on delivering inventive gore, as well as exploring the lore of this universe, while bringing the curse from an isolated log cabin in the woods to a well-populated apartment block, as well as twisting the love that a mother has for her children into something sinister.
It seems the franchise is finally finding its footing once again, as we only had to wait 3 years for the newest instalment, Evil Dead Burn. Within this, Sébastien Vaniček explores many themes of grief, seeming to find some amount of middle ground between Álvarez's gritty adaptation and Raimi's original, much sillier explorations of this world.
I love how this movie manages to balance themes of grief, showing how different parts of somebody's family can affect how they see them in death, as well as how differently grief can affect those people. Will's parents saw him as the 'golden child'; he could do no wrong and made them proud in every facet of life. In reality, he was a horribly physically and emotionally abusive husband to Alice for years.
This grief of losing Will affects his parents in such vastly different, equally interesting ways. His father, Edgar, becomes violent and aggressive, taking his emotions out on his family even before he's 'infected'. His mother, on the other hand, sinks all her energy into the rest of the family, tirelessly pulling them as close together as possible out of fear of losing another, as well as pushing away anybody she thinks can threaten her existing relationships, namely Alice.
This movie seems to focus heavily on building tension, more than the simple thrill of the gore, which I thought was an absolutely incredible decision. Much of what made the original The Evil Dead great was its tension-building - there weren't many kills or even action scenes, allowing for so much more development of these relationships, only to tear them down and use them against each other once each becomes a deadite.
One of my biggest worries was that this would focus way too much on its gore and kills. While this definitely leant heavily into that aspect, it wasn't fully in the way I expected. Due to Evil Dead Rise mostly gaining popularity and going viral online for one specific scene, in which somebody gets a cheese grater dragged down their leg, I thought this new movie may incessantly go for those kinds of kills - the ones that make you squirm more than just regular gore. It seemed there was only really one of these, which was the moment at which one character falls onto a loaded dishwasher, being impaled by various pieces of silverware.
Something I really thought was lacking here was the comedy. The Evil Dead franchise has always had some footing in the comedy genre, at times almost becoming comedy more than they are horror - that is, if we disregard 2013's adaptation. One great thing about a new Evil Dead movie is seeing how well it mixes these two, seemingly vastly different genres.
Unfortunately, Evil Dead Burn didn't seem to create this balance quite as well as something like Evil Dead Rise was able to. The comedy often takes a backseat for the majority of the movie, only really emerging when they decide to show the grandma's ignorance of the events unfolding due to her dementia. Not only did this just feel quite lazy and repetitive, but it also just felt somewhat disrespectful.
The concept of somebody with dementia encountering these deadites is incredibly interesting, but was only used to its full potential once. I would've loved to have seen more moments in which Polly forgot her family had become deadites, interacting with them as normal, without it being used for laughs.
The one time that I thought this was used correctly was when Polly became a deadite herself. Just after being put to bed, she finally says her own daughter's name, seemingly now remembering everything, causing her daughter to completely forget about any signs of danger. This really reminded me of the original movies, in which the deadites would lure people in by acting cured, only to attack once their guard is down. The only thing I would've improved upon was the fact that Polly also started floating. It would've been so much more exciting if we, the audience, also didn't fully know that Polly was already a deadite, instead finding out with Susan.
All in all, this movie is quite an interesting Evil Dead instalment, with a good amount of gore and some incredibly disgusting kills. While the concept of a magical deadite-killing dagger was ultimately uninteresting, I enjoyed the attempt at expanding the lore. Even if this may have missed a few opportunities, it's still a great watch, especially if you're a fan of Evil Dead Rise.
No AI was used in writing this article.