Now available on 4K UHD is Evil Dead Burn. Until recently, I considered the Evil Dead franchise one of the most consistently entertaining horror series around. From Sam Raimi’s original trilogy to the Evil Dead reboot and Evil Dead Rise, each installment managed to deliver the right combination of terror, gore, and fun. Even the short-lived cable series was a blast. Sébastien Vaniček clearly understood the assignment when it came to making an Evil Dead movie. Unfortunately, he also decided to add his own seasoning—and, for me, it doesn’t quite work.
There’s plenty of gore, brutality, and nastiness here, along with some of the mean-spirited mayhem that has defined the more recent installments. The problem is that Evil Dead Burn is simply too gray, too serious, and far too invested in personal trauma. Those elements might work in another horror film, but they feel strangely out of place in a series that has always balanced its nastiness with a wicked sense of fun.
The film is mostly set at the Price family’s vacation home, where Joseph Price (Hunter Doohan) discovers that his late grandfather had been researching the Necronomicon. He also uncovers the Kandarian Dagger, an ancient weapon capable of sending demons back to hell. Naturally, Joseph makes the brilliant decision to remove the spell concealing the dagger from the Deadites. Once the evil is unleashed, the demons want the dagger for themselves—and they’re more than willing to tear the Price family apart to get it.
And honestly, this is one seriously loathsome family. Watching them get ripped apart and possessed isn’t exactly heartbreaking. The various members have spent years either inflicting emotional trauma on one another or carrying the scars of it themselves. There’s certainly plenty of material here for a dark family drama, but that’s part of the problem.
Evil Dead Burn absolutely delivers when it comes to the blood and guts. There are some genuinely brutal and wonderfully nasty moments, but the movie rarely feels like it’s having any fun with them. That’s a major problem for me because the Evil Dead franchise has always understood that horror works even better when you can laugh while you’re cringing. This is easily the most depressing entry in the series.
Hopefully, when Evil Dead Wrath arrives in theaters, the franchise can get back to what made it so much fun in the first place. There’s plenty of life left in Evil Dead, and I’m all for seeing the series continue for many more years. But as long as filmmakers remember that the secret ingredient isn’t just the blood, guts, and Deadites, it’s the twisted sense of fun underneath it all.
Bonus Features:
- Evil Dead: Blazing the Trail
- The Hot Shot: Evil Dead Burn’s One-Shot Sequence
- Thie One’s Gonna Burn
