Sébastien Vanicek’s crispy-fried new entry in the Evil Dead series balances all-out gore with humour and a euro-splatter vibe
Evil Dead Burn brings a flame-grilled new theme to the series, starting as it does with a fiery conflagration (admittedly after some creepy lake action). It’s also packed throughout with subtle references to burns and blisters (and some much less subtle), though without it becoming overdone.
There are plenty of other inventively gory setpieces as well – the scene where one of the characters repeatedly attempts gunshot suicide is very nicely done, and the prosthetic work is great overall (we’ll talk about the CGI later on). Plus, of course, like any Evil Dead fan knows, don’t get attached to anyone, because no one ever feels truly safe.
As well as being brutal and gory, this is also the funniest of the new Evil Deads. Vanicek pitches the humour well so it feels like Evil Dead, but resists going full Three Stooges as Raimi would, as that would jar with the darker tone of this film. Maude Davey as grandma, as old ladies in Evil Dead films often do, steals the entire film with laugh out loud lines, great physical comedy and some genuinely creepy bits.
Meanwhile, Yacoub gets her scream queen on as Alice, the abused wife thrown out of the frying pan into the fire. It feels like a no too dissimilar awful in-laws set-up to Ready or Not, with Yacoub playing a similar confused but resilient and murdery role to Samara Weaving (with a similarly excellent scream). Meanwhile Doohan goes from one toxic ‘nice guy’ in Wednesday to a different flavour of same here.
Buchanan and Shand get to thoroughly enjoy being snarlingly evil as Deadites, and Wright offers some depth as a controlling but destructive matriarch. You’ll also have to keep a beady eye out for Bruce in all the mayhem.
Evil Dead Burn’s story tries to dig a little deeper than normal, investigating the corrosive effects of academic obsession, and also juxtaposing a successful but abusive brother against a nice but ineffectual one, with no one coming out the winner. Admittedly we’re not talking Obsession (go see Obsession if you haven’t) levels of psychological depth here, and the film soon cracks on with the eyeball gouging, but it’s nice that there’s a bit more to it than just gore and yuks.
As well as having a French director and star, the film also evokes a lot of the, er, high tension of 90s and 2000s French horror cinema. It shares with those films the taut, filmmaking and constantly building stress that makes you suddenly realise your fingernails are buried in the armrests. Indeed one choice of murder implement feels like a direct reference back to Haute Tension, though the director wouldn’t confirm that when I asked.
The only place the film fell down a bit, was the last ten minutes. We get to meet a flame-grilled deadite crispy critter, and sadly the CGI just isn’t very good at all. Like the eponymous Mummy from the 1999 film – and that CGI was ropey even for the time – only with really bad sunburn. Such a shame, when directors like Del Toro have been doing beautiful, creepy animated burnt bodies for years now. Also perhaps ironic, considering Lee Cronin, the planned director, left this film to make his own (daft but inventive and fun) Mummy film.
This doesn’t take away from all the glorious, winceworthy mayhem that goes before it however, or a couple of delightfully horrid scenes that go after it. This is both the best of the new era of Evil Dead films, and the one that understands what Evil Dead should be more than any of the non-Raimi films. For that Vanicek and his very game cast deserve you to put yoru rotting paws together.
If you see Evil Dead Burn at the cinema though, you may want to take a cushion to hide behind – we attended a preview at a Prince Charles Cinema packed full of hardened gorehounds, and a couple of moments in particular made the whole place cringe down behind their seats.
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