Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Sébastien Vaniček
Starring: Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Erroll Shand, Maude Davey, George Pullar, Greta Van Den Brink
The idea of spending time with your in-laws is nightmare fuel for many people in itself. Now imagine your in-laws blame you for the death of your husband and are succumbing one by one to possession by ancient demons. That's the potentially winning premise of Evil Dead Burn, the latest entry in a series that has deviated wildly from its horror-comedy origins at this point. Any comic potential of the setup is squandered by French writer/director Sébastien Vaniček, who seems to have as much understanding of Sam Raimi's low budget 1981 classic as the numbskulls who added it to the UK's Video Nasties list on its release. Evil Dead Burn is ironically nastier than anything added to that list back in the day, but there is none of the violent comedy that gave rise to the term "splatstick."
Vaniček and co-writer Florent Bernard seem more influenced by the New French Extremity movement of the 2000s than Raimi's knockabout original trilogy. As with the 2013 reboot, with which this is unconnected, there is a disturbingly real theme at its centre. In 2013's Evil Dead it was drug addiction; here it's domestic abuse. Vaniček deploys this subject in such a cheaply exploitative fashion that it adds a bitter taste to the proceedings, rendering Evil Dead Burn just another piece of trauma trash.
Rumours that this sixth instalment would serve as yet another reboot are immediately dispelled by a prologue that sees the return of a character from its 2023 predecessor Evil Dead Rise. Said character is immediately set aside as the focus shifts to Alice (Souheila Yacoub, star of Gaspar Noe's Climax, which speaks to Vaniček's inspirations), a young French woman who relocated to the US after marrying American restaurateur Will (George Pullar). After the latest in a series of marital disputes, a drunken Will speeds off in his car and has an encounter with the aforementioned Evil Dead Rise returnee, leading to him becoming possessed before he passes away in a grisly crash.
Having suffered years of abuse at Will's hands (detailed in brief flashbacks of spousal violence), Alice reluctantly attends his funeral, surrounded only by his family members. Will's parents have a particular dislike of their daughter-in-law, making things deeply uncomfortable when the mourners reconvene to a nearby cabin (while it's never directly addressed, the dynamic of a French-Arab woman marrying into a WASPy American family adds an unspoken layer of tension). But that's the least of Alice's problems, as it turns out the Deadites have targeted her in-laws, as Will's grandfather was an occultist who has hidden their much sought after Kandarian dagger somewhere in the cabin.
To its credit, Evil Dead Burn doesn't waste any time getting into its action, with the shit hitting the fan as soon as the characters enter the cabin. But the keyword here is "action" rather than "horror," and certainly not "comedy." Where Raimi modelled his choreography on the violently cartoonish slapstick of The Three Stooges, Vaniček seems more inspired by the bone crunching action of professional wrestling. Characters are lifted up and body slammed, and deadites put their human foes in submission holds. The camera work is more in tune with Asian martial arts movies than with the series' signature steadicam moves.
As with Vaniček's debut feature Infested, there are some technically impressive moments here (a shot that reveals itself to be playing out in a mirror is a particular dazzler), but they don't really amount to a satisfying whole. None of the characters are interesting, and the protagonist is defined solely by her past victimisation at the hands of her late husband. Alice has the classic final girl arc of finding the strength to fight back, but Yacoub is miscast. The Swiss actress gives off the air of a tough badass who would never allow herself to be victimised in such a manner.
Along with the obligatory traumatic backstory, Evil Dead Burn is also burdened with another annoying modern horror convention, that of lighting so dim you find yourself squinting to take in the gory details. If Raimi could afford lights on a budget of less than $400,000, what's Evil Dead Burn's excuse? The core of the action plays out at night but even the preceding daytime scenes are painted in a murky grey. It's only when the action leaves the cabin for a surprisingly Terminator-inspired climax that Evil Dead Burn decides to turn on a few lights.
There is a generation that likely thinks of The Evil Dead in terms of its comedy-free 21st century entries, but for those of us who grew up laughing our asses off at the exploits of Bruce Campbell's Ash, it's a baffling reconfiguration. Raimi's films were to low budget schlock as the Zucker Brothers' Airplane movies were to disaster films. Remove the comedy from Airplane and you just get Airport. Excise the humour from Evil Dead and you just get another sombre gorefest.
Evil Dead Burn is in UK/ROI cinemas from July 9th.
