REVIEW: Evil Dead Burn

By George Bate

Few horror franchises are as consistent in quality as Evil Dead. While the likes of Halloween, Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and The Exorcist all feature weak installments, to date, Evil Dead arguably doesn’t have a poor installment. Even Fede Álvarez’s 2013 remake, which received mixed reviews from critics, admirably attempted something different by replacing the absurd humor with relentless terror and gore. Unfortunately, however, Evil Dead’s strong streak comes to an abrupt end with Evil Dead Burn, a mean and unpleasant outing that drains much of the fun and groovy out of the beloved horror franchise.

From French director and co-writer Sébastien Vaniček (Infested), Evil Dead Burn largely focuses on a new collective of doomed characters. After losing her abusive husband, a grieving woman named Alice (Souheila Yacoub) rendezvouses with her in-laws at their secluded family home.  What is intended to be a quiet gathering to mourn the passing of Alice’s husband soon turns into a nightmare from hell as the family members become possessed and transform into ancient demons one by one.

Evil Dead (2013) and Evil Dead Rise may have departed from the quirky humor of Sam Raimi’s original trilogy, but they delivered such abrasive assaults on the senses that one couldn’t help but crack a smile. In other terms, they were so scary they were funny. Evil Dead Burn attempts to follow in the footsteps of Fede Álvarez and Lee Cronin’s films by delivering another unrelentingly brutal and bloody installment, and yet woefully misses the mark with its balance of frivolity and frights.

Rather than make one laugh at how depraved a particularly violent moment is like Evil Dead Rise accomplished, Evil Dead Burn is far too unpleasant and mean to generate even the slightest of smiles. The movie certainly improves as it moves along and pushes the boundaries of the R-rating with its violence, but repeated attempts to gross out its audience in increasingly brutal ways reduce the franchise’s signature savagery to a gimmick. Eventually, it is difficult to not arrive at the conclusion that the sole mandate for the filmmakers was to disgust its audience and make them squirm.

Vaniček’s follow-up to the stylish creature feature Infested retains his first effort’s craftsmanship and engaging directing. The film bolsters a number of impressively engineered setpieces, namely a brutal scene unfolding in the confines of a car, that will satisfy particularly bloodthirsty moviegoers. Vaniček employs, albeit not nearly enough, creative camera movements and shot composition that both honor Raimi’s films and offer a new visual language for the established franchise to embrace.

Vaniček’s filmmaking, however, is undone by lifeless and washed out cinematography. Director of photography Philip Lozano coats the film in a dull gray pallor that, coupled with a setting that almost exclusively is restricted to a personality-devoid and dilapidated house, renders Evil Dead Burn the most visually drab installment in the franchise. Whereas other entries thrive with memorable atmospheres, Vaniček’s film is such a visually uninspired film that it often feels more akin to an average, unremarkable supernatural horror flick than it does a bonafide installment of the Evil Dead franchise.

The lifelessness of the cinematography unfortunately proves to be an apt fitting for a collective of similarly lifeless characters. The film attempts to ground its story in the journey of a woman coming to terms with the domestic abuse perpetrated by her recently deceased husband and, ultimately, finding salvation from the grip of his toxic family. But the themes and ideas are approached with exceedingly little novelty and far too much restraint. Whereas Evil Dead (2013) uniquely integrated substance use into a story about Deadites, Evil Dead Burn botches its efforts to do the same with domestic violence.

The squandered undertaking of telling a more nuanced story leaves the performers disappointingly little to work with. Souheila Yacoub is given the most material given her role as the protagonist, and yet even she is repeatedly underserved by poor writing that deprives her character of personality. Out of the cast, Erroll Shand triumphs with an unsettling performance as one of the first members of the family to fall victim to the Deadites, but even his stellar turn isn’t enough to give a single character in the film a modicum of charisma.

VERDICT: 5/10

Evil Dead Burn drains much of the fun and groovy out of the Evil Dead franchise. Mean, nasty, and unpleasant, Sébastien Vaniček’s film improves as it goes along and bolsters some impressively grotesque set pieces that push the boundaries of the R-rating but is dragged down by lifeless cinematography, uninteresting characters, underdeveloped themes, and dismal storytelling. Most egregious is the film’s woeful mishandling of the balance between frivolity and frights. Whereas Evil Dead (2013) and Evil Dead Rise excel as movies that are so scary they’re funny, Evil Dead Burn is simply unpleasant and violent for violent’s sake. Easily the weakest of the franchise, Evil Dead reaches a low point of its nearly 50 year history with its poorest installment to date.