‘Evil Dead Burn’ Review: Merci à Satan, French Filmmakers Sébastien Vaniček and Florent Bernard are Back to Tearing Apart the Human Body [B+]

You wouldn’t necessarily know it, but the Evil Dead franchise has an overarching personality that’s been in perpetual crisis. What began as a no-budget, near-avant-garde blood-and-guts freakout made by some friends in the woods — stamped with writer-director Sam Raimi’s chaotic, irreverent style — soon turned more roguish. Rights issues made it impossible for Raimi to shoot a proper sequel, so Evil Dead II became a quasi-remake of the first film, with appreciably more Three Stooges-style slapstick. Next came a foray into dark medieval fantasy, as smart-alecky hero Ash (Bruce Campbell) is flung into the English Dark Ages in Army of Darkness. That same impertinence carried into the TV series Ash vs Evil Dead, putting Ash’s wisecracking brawls with the Deadites at odds with where the more contemporary films went: both the 2013 remake, directed by Fede Álvarez, and 2023’s Evil Dead Rise from Lee Cronin chase intensity and gruesome extravagance instead, never even attempting to recapture Raimi’s original penchant for rascally humor or experimental verve.

But if the franchise is to continue as a gory yet inherently glossy studio production, it turns out there’s not much of a better pair of filmmakers to hand it off to than a couple of French provocateurs. The sixth installment in the franchise is helmed by director Sébastien Vaniček, aided again by co-writer Florent Bernard of the pair’s nasty spider-infestation horror movie, Infested. Just as they proved their capacity for stomach-turning thrills in that film, they imbue the Evil Dead franchise with a new, fiendish energy, and some of the meanest, most grisly violence seen from an American studio horror film in some time. 

Still readily leaning into the over-the-top mutilations and cringe-inducing maimings that have become a staple of the franchise, the pair look back to the forebears of violent horror from their own country, dressing a New French Extremity revival in the trappings of an Evil Dead movie. Yes, the story may be propelled by Deadite spirits tormenting a family as they search for some Satanic MacGuffin, and we may watch as, one by one, our leading players are duly turned into id-driven, barbarism-defined demons. But, at its heart, this is a film focused on the fragility of human flesh and how that reflects a desolate emotional fracturing in its characters. Viewers familiar with the genre will recognize the shades of Martyrs and High Tension that color this home-invasion horror, with its dingy color palette, rapid-fire editing, and fascination with the dismantling of the human body and psyche.

The family in Evil Dead Burn is already on uncomfortable terms before they start hacking away at one another: Frenchwoman Alice (Souheila Yacoub) finds herself grieving the loss of her husband, William (George Pullar), in real time with her in-laws as they retreat to the family’s country house after the funeral. While perturbed by Alice’s seeming lack of mourning for William’s passing, they don’t know that William was driven off the road and infected by a Deadite hunting for an important dagger — turns out Alice’s grandfather-in-law was a researcher and scholar of the Necronomicon, and his historic artifacts are what’s drawn the Deadites to their door.

What’s unclear is whether they know that Alice was actually stuck in an abusive relationship with Will, who is shown in flashbacks verbally berating and instigating fights with Alice. This fuels the undercurrent of drama within the remote walls of the house: mother Susan (Tandi Wright) has an emotional antagonism toward Alice to match father Edgar’s (Erroll Shand) hard-shelled detachment, while brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and his girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan) are caught in the middle, trying to keep things copacetic amid the fraught dynamics, and help look after dementia-ridden grandmother Polly (Maude Davey) besides.

Too bad for them that they’re basically doomed from the get-go, as the demonic curse has already skulked its way into the family unit. Before long, the anxiety that seems to stem from blaming Alice for Will’s death explodes into more tangible, visceral forms of emotional violence and bloodletting. Vaniček demonstrates his chops at winding up his audience, indulging in the pressure that builds from delaying the brutal inevitability. An early dinner scene is an expertly staged instance of anxiety escalation, as disparate modes of unease crisscross, intertwining interpersonal drama and supernatural foreboding. As Susan passive-aggressively presses Alice about her influence within the marriage, and while the rest of the family tries to assuage the situation, the demonic threat looms large until the situation erupts — a death by dinner fork among them, as if Vaniček is proudly announcing that no one is safe.

It’s that direction and tone that set Evil Dead Burn apart from the other, newer entries. This is probably the best of the franchise not to carry Raimi’s name as director (though he serves as a producer) because of how it locates its own sense of ingenuity and worthwhile homage. It regularly feels low-budget and dirty, like the French films it’s indebted to, affording it a scrappiness that matches the original film in its own distinct way. But it’s also not afraid to show off: the extended oner that served as the film’s initial trailer, which sees Alice crawling through the house beset by Deadite anarchy, is a rousing bit of controlled formal flashiness, as are other instances in which the camera spins and flips all around to keep up with demonic creatures that tend to crawl up the walls and ceilings.

Burn also carves out its own modes of dark comedy, mostly revolving around the fact that having someone with dementia in the house is a very unfortunate wrinkle for an Evil Dead movie. Again, the film recognizes the franchise’s now-amorphous identity and bends it to its own engaging effect. However, Bernard’s script is far from perfect: it offers perfunctory rationalizations for getting everyone into the house with a bunch of demons, like the throwaway explanation that Joseph is using his grandfather’s old demonic antiquities to write a book, while never explaining why the Deadites are powered by heat this time around. The themes also often feel more fully fleshed out than the characters themselves — Vaniček and Bernard have a clear idea of what they want to say with these characters, but don’t have the time to completely develop who all of these people are. 

But among all the impalings, dismemberments, amputations, head smashing, Deadite kissing, and denture sucking (somehow, maybe the grossest thing that happens in this movie), it’s those ideas that intersect ideas of real-world cruelty with the hyper-wickedness of Evil Dead that allow this to function in a way that feels worthwhile and exciting. It ties the anticipated jolts of ultraviolence to a much more sobering reality of cultures of abuse and complicity, and offers some form of twisted salvation, burning away and letting go of the past. All that, and there’s a Deadite dog. Maybe that’s what Evil Dead is all about.

Grade: B+

Warner Bros will release Evil Dead Burn only in theaters on July 10.