Evil Dead Burn review: More blood, less scares; mistakes gore for horror
Evil Dead Burn pushes the franchise's signature gore to new extremes, but is that enough to keep viewers invested? Read our review to find out whether the latest chapter delivers the scares or loses itself in the bloodshed.
If there were a competition for finding newer, nastier and increasingly ridiculous ways to mutilate human beings, Evil Dead Burn would be taking home gold. Within minutes, limbs are flying, bones are snapping, flesh is peeling, and enough blood is splashed around to put an entire blood bank out of business. The problem is, after sitting through these gruesome attacks for an hour, you stop wincing and start waiting for the end credits to roll.
The Evil Dead films have never exactly been subtle. Sam Raimi’s cult classic thrived on over-the-top gore, possessed humans with foul mouths and a wonderfully unhinged sense of humour. Even when people were getting chainsawed in half, there was an infectious playfulness to the madness. The franchise always knew it was in on the joke. However, Evil Dead Burn forgot to laugh.
Directed by Sebastien Vaniek, the latest chapter follows Alice (Souheila Yacoub), a grieving widow who reluctantly reunites with her late husband’s estranged family at their isolated ancestral home. Naturally, there's a mysterious attic... naturally, there is a harrowing past... naturally, everyone has secrets and naturally, everyone begins dying in spectacularly disgusting fashion.
The mythology, which has often been one of the franchise's biggest strengths, feels frustratingly underexplained here. The film expects viewers to simply accept the chaos rather than invest in the evil that's causing it. What the movie also fails to do is tell viewers how and why the ghosts are summoned back.
To the film’s credit, nobody can accuse it of holding back. Every set piece seems designed to outdo the previous one. If one Deadite is battering someone's face, another is ripping someone's body apart in ways that you can never imagine. Household objects become murder weapons, and every room eventually resembles a crime scene that would make forensic experts resign on the spot. For hardcore gorehounds, this is probably paradise, but for everyone else, it becomes exhausting.
The biggest issue isn’t the violence. It’s that the violence is almost the entire personality of the film. Every time the story hints at exploring grief, guilt or fractured family relationships, someone gets possessed even before the emotion can land. The screenplay keeps introducing interesting ideas only to abandon them for another creatively staged massacre. And the horror? That ends up just becoming the sidekick.
Alice is positioned as the emotional anchor, but the script gives her little to work with beyond looking traumatised while watching increasingly inventive acts of carnage unfold around her. Souheila Yacoub does her best to inject humanity into the role, but no performance can survive a screenplay that’s more interested in exploding eyeballs than developing characters.
Even the Deadites feel strangely undercooked this time. They have always been terrifying, but they were also sarcastic, theatrical and gleefully cruel. Here, they are mostly screaming murder machines. They are vicious enough, but they lack the twisted personalities that once made them unforgettable. After a while, every kill begins to blur into the next. The shock value wears off. The emotional stakes never arrive. And what should have been ninety-odd minutes of gleeful horror gradually starts feeling like an endurance test in practical effects.
Ironically, the film is at its strongest when it stops trying so hard. A brilliantly choreographed action sequence involving a car briefly injects urgency and tension into the proceedings. Vaniek also stages several impressive long takes that show genuine visual flair. There's no denying that he has an eye for staging mayhem. The camera glides through blood-soaked hallways with confidence, and a few inventive visual flourishes hint at a far better horror film buried underneath all the carnage. It's just a shame that the script keeps choosing excess over atmosphere.
The practical effects deserve applause too. In an era dominated by CGI blood splatter, the old-school makeup work here is wonderfully revolting. Unfortunately, technical skill can only carry a film so far.
Yes, horror fans will probably discover at least three new fears involving ordinary household objects. But somewhere beneath the litres of fake blood and endless body horror lies a film that forgot the most important lesson of the franchise -- being disgusting isn’t the same as being entertaining.
If there were a competition for finding newer, nastier and increasingly ridiculous ways to mutilate human beings, Evil Dead Burn would be taking home gold. Within minutes, limbs are flying, bones are snapping, flesh is peeling, and enough blood is splashed around to put an entire blood bank out of business. The problem is, after sitting through these gruesome attacks for an hour, you stop wincing and start waiting for the end credits to roll.
The Evil Dead films have never exactly been subtle. Sam Raimi’s cult classic thrived on over-the-top gore, possessed humans with foul mouths and a wonderfully unhinged sense of humour. Even when people were getting chainsawed in half, there was an infectious playfulness to the madness. The franchise always knew it was in on the joke. However, Evil Dead Burn forgot to laugh.
Directed by Sebastien Vaniek, the latest chapter follows Alice (Souheila Yacoub), a grieving widow who reluctantly reunites with her late husband’s estranged family at their isolated ancestral home. Naturally, there's a mysterious attic... naturally, there is a harrowing past... naturally, everyone has secrets and naturally, everyone begins dying in spectacularly disgusting fashion.
The mythology, which has often been one of the franchise's biggest strengths, feels frustratingly underexplained here. The film expects viewers to simply accept the chaos rather than invest in the evil that's causing it. What the movie also fails to do is tell viewers how and why the ghosts are summoned back.
To the film’s credit, nobody can accuse it of holding back. Every set piece seems designed to outdo the previous one. If one Deadite is battering someone's face, another is ripping someone's body apart in ways that you can never imagine. Household objects become murder weapons, and every room eventually resembles a crime scene that would make forensic experts resign on the spot. For hardcore gorehounds, this is probably paradise, but for everyone else, it becomes exhausting.
The biggest issue isn’t the violence. It’s that the violence is almost the entire personality of the film. Every time the story hints at exploring grief, guilt or fractured family relationships, someone gets possessed even before the emotion can land. The screenplay keeps introducing interesting ideas only to abandon them for another creatively staged massacre. And the horror? That ends up just becoming the sidekick.
Alice is positioned as the emotional anchor, but the script gives her little to work with beyond looking traumatised while watching increasingly inventive acts of carnage unfold around her. Souheila Yacoub does her best to inject humanity into the role, but no performance can survive a screenplay that’s more interested in exploding eyeballs than developing characters.
Even the Deadites feel strangely undercooked this time. They have always been terrifying, but they were also sarcastic, theatrical and gleefully cruel. Here, they are mostly screaming murder machines. They are vicious enough, but they lack the twisted personalities that once made them unforgettable. After a while, every kill begins to blur into the next. The shock value wears off. The emotional stakes never arrive. And what should have been ninety-odd minutes of gleeful horror gradually starts feeling like an endurance test in practical effects.
Ironically, the film is at its strongest when it stops trying so hard. A brilliantly choreographed action sequence involving a car briefly injects urgency and tension into the proceedings. Vaniek also stages several impressive long takes that show genuine visual flair. There's no denying that he has an eye for staging mayhem. The camera glides through blood-soaked hallways with confidence, and a few inventive visual flourishes hint at a far better horror film buried underneath all the carnage. It's just a shame that the script keeps choosing excess over atmosphere.
The practical effects deserve applause too. In an era dominated by CGI blood splatter, the old-school makeup work here is wonderfully revolting. Unfortunately, technical skill can only carry a film so far.
Yes, horror fans will probably discover at least three new fears involving ordinary household objects. But somewhere beneath the litres of fake blood and endless body horror lies a film that forgot the most important lesson of the franchise -- being disgusting isn’t the same as being entertaining.
