Evil Dead Burn Review: Groovy Gore Galore

Evil Dead Burn follows a familiar formula: foolish characters read The Book of the Dead, and we are privy to their gruesomely entertaining suffering.

The franchise rot isn’t setting in yet, but there are hints at tiredness on display, despite the energetic insanity that director Sébastien Vaniček (Infested) maintains throughout.

The Evil Dead franchise, which was born from the weird and wonderful mind of Sam Raimi, has always flip-flopped between goofy silliness and serious horror. The first, The Evil Dead (1981), was a more suspenseful affair, before the follow-ups (Evil Dead II, 1987, and Army of Darkness, 1993) were far sillier outings for main character Ash (Bruce Campbell). Evil Dead Burn is perhaps the gravest entry yet, although there are still various attempts at humour and quick one-liners. The severe tone generally works—the gore is gruesome, the violence skin-crawling, the horror suspenseful—but it can come off as self-serious at times, especially when Vaniček attempts to shoehorn in a domestic abuse storyline.

The central character in Evil Dead Burn is Alice (Souheila Yacoub, of The Balconettes), whom we first meet at a club with husband Will (George Pullar, of Moon Rock for Monday), his brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan, Wednesday), and Joseph’s partner Thya (Luciane Buchanan, of The Night Agent). Things quickly go awry after Will crashes on his way home, dying a horrible death at the hands of a Deadite. From there, we arrive at the central setting of Evil Dead Burn: the decrepit and neglected family home, where Alice, Joseph, and Thya spend the day with Will’s parents and grandmother. It’s a little elongated in its setup, but when things go wrong, they go wrong hard and fast.

First to turn into a Deadite is the horrible patriarch, Edgar (Erroll Shand, of Pike River), and Vaniček follows proceedings with a ferocious and unwavering eye. Philip Lozano’s (MadS) cinematography and Maxime Caro’s editing are mostly excellent, frequently kinetic and flashy. There are numerous set-pieces that are conducted via brilliant long takes and tracking shots, the violence erupting around the helpless characters with reckless abandon. It’s incredibly intense, which is to be expected from this franchise that so often moves at breakneck speed, but sometimes it veers into bombastic and obnoxious territory. Loud noises and extreme violence aren’t always enough to carry Evil Dead Burn.

Most glaring is the film’s central storyline by screenwriters Vaniček and Florent Bernard (Meet the Leroys). Will’s abuse of Alice is clear from the very first scenes, and the severity of it becomes clearer as Evil Dead Burn advances. At best, its inclusion feels tacky and clumsy; at worst, it is offensive within the context of such a silly film where violence is one of the main draws. Thankfully, Vaniček and Bernard don’t frequently return to this plot point, although they do in a notably shoddy finale.

Nevertheless, Evil Dead Burn mostly sticks the landing, with some franchise-best set-pieces. Vaniček takes great pleasure in setting up potential opportunities for gore and suffering—an open and loaded dishwasher, a knife tucked in a pocket, a pen with a sharp nib—and even if some of it slips into montage territory, there is such an underlying torrent of terror driving everything forward that this doesn’t matter hugely. Evil Dead Burn might be the weakest entry into the franchise yet, but it’s still a rollicking time at the cinema. The franchise lethargy hasn’t touched Evil Dead yet, and the latest entry proves there is still life in this proudly morbid franchise.

Evil Dead Burn will be released in US theaters, in UK & Irish cinemas and globally in theatres on July 10, 2026.