Directed by Sébastien Vaniček — Screenplay by Sébastien Vaniček and Florent Bernard.
It has been fascinating to watch how the Evil Dead film series has evolved from being the genre-fluid horror brainchild of auteur Sam Raimi to now being a franchise that essentially offers an opportunity to on-the-rise filmmakers to play around with Raimi’s creations. In 2013, it was Fede Álvarez who made his feature directorial debut with the reboot simply titled Evil Dead, and he has since gone on to make films such as Don’t Breathe and Alien: Romulus. Ten years later, it was The Hole in the Ground director Lee Cronin who got to tell his story with Evil Dead Rise, and earlier this year, Cronin released a The Mummy film that is, essentially, an Evil Dead film in everything but name. Now, in 2026, it is French filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček who has taken hold of the reins of the series of films. The fact that he was attached to the franchise was something that made me quite excited, because I was a big fan of his Arachnophobia-meets-Attack-the-Block spider-horror flick Infested (also titled Vermins). Like Cronin and Álvarez before him, Vaniček has made an entertaining and brutal horror flick. Although it’s not a perfectly smooth ride, Evil Dead Burn is yet another solid entry in the beloved series of films, which is still going strong.
Sébastien Vaniček’s Evil Dead Burn follows Alice (played by Souheila Yacoub), a French woman who has just lost her American husband, Will (played by George Pullar), in a violent car crash. Following the funeral service, she and her in-laws, who blame her for his death, return to the family lake house, where her father-in-law, Edgar (played by Erroll Shand), starts behaving more and more erratically and violently. When Edgar inevitably lashes out, he causes havoc and bloodshed that kickstarts a brutal evening and night in a home where Alice already didn’t feel welcome. As the demonic entities, the Deadites, possess the bodies of multiple people, including her father-in-law, it also becomes clear that the demons are there for a very specific reason. It turns out that this very family is connected to the study of the Book of the Dead — the Necronomicon — and that the lake house may house an important object.
I mentioned at the top of the review that this is a remarkably genre-fluid horror film series. You see, while the original film that started it all was indeed an independent cabin-in-the-woods horror film, Sam Raimi eventually took his brainchild into a much wackier territory. In came slapstick humor and dark fantasy, with Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Although the 21st-century reboot films honor the original films, their specific genre concoctions are not nearly as tongue-in-cheek slapstick as Raimi’s sequels were. That having been said, they still include a demonic, gleeful sense of dark humor that, every once in a while, will make its presence known. So, that begs the question, what exact genre concoction has Vaniček decided upon? Well, although there certainly are moments of awkward, tasteless, or dark humor to be found, it is mostly seen through the grandmother-in-law character (played by Maude Davey), whose dementia with paranoid delusions (as well as her stair lift and her dentures) the French director plays for laughs. There’s also one hard cut from a car crash to a nightclub that is quite humorous. As a sidenote, I will add that fans of Infested will notice a couple of references to that film, including a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it arachnid, a spinning camera, and timers or automatic shut-off switches.
Although there are many different deadites, the film makes an interesting choice to have a menacing, imposing, and unhinged male deadite, i.e., the father-in-law, be the primary foe, especially given the other reboot films have built the horror around primarily female deadites. Vaniček’s film is brutal and relentless. Instead of being fixated on blood in the way that Lee Cronin’s film was, it instead holds the camera on certain strange images, like seeing someone repeatedly shoot themselves in the head or having that very same person tongue-kiss someone for quite some time. That may not sound as intense as the other films in the series, but rest assured that Vaniček has plenty of intensity up his sleeve, whether that’s seeing a deadite body contort, an extended long-take highlighting the violence all around the main character in the spacious living room, or forcing an item that is not supposed to be in an ear all the way in. Other than the aforementioned living room long-take (and a scene that uses the reflection of a mirror excitingly), the most memorable sequence is a deadite attack inside a car, in which someone decides to use a headrest for violence.
Although it certainly has plenty of brutal images, I’m not sure it has anything quite as unforgettable as the cheese grater scene from Evil Dead Rise. Before I saw the film, I had heard murmurs that it was quite mean-spirited. I guess you could put that label on any of the reboot films in the series. While I don’t think it enters into mindless torture porn, I do think it must be said that there is one family pet-centric moment in the film that feels like it is only there for shock value. I don’t think it ultimately added all that much to the film, and so it does actually feel like a mean-spirited moment of cruelty. It isn’t the only misstep the film makes, though. The last fifteen to ten minutes feature a CG-deadite creation that just looks entirely unconvincing, in a sequence that feels tacked on and almost feels more at home in a Terminator film. The color palette of the film is quite grimy and dull. I also think that, even though the pre-title card scenes do a good job of tying the entire universe together, they feature some slightly disorienting camerawork. In general, Vaniček’s film uses way too many close-ups, flashbacks, and even too much slow-motion. The flashbacks and the slow-motion mess with the rhythm of the film and layer on the themes of the film too thickly.
And, yes, this is very much about something more than just the Book of the Dead. The film very clearly is about spousal abuse and feeling like an outsider in your marriage, or the family you marry into. There are some really effective scenes in which the film makes it clear that in the world of Vaniček’s film, blood is much thicker than water, and you can’t trust your partner if they have to choose between you and their family. In that way, it is a remarkably cynical film about the institution of marriage (if memory serves, the film even holds on an image in a wedding video showing newlyweds signing their marriage license, thus emphasizing marriage as a contractual transaction), not unlike the excellent Haley Z. Boston horror series Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, released earlier this year.
When the film ended and I had seen both scenes that played during and after the credits, I was mostly satisfied with the experience as a whole. Sébastien Vaniček’s film doesn’t drop the ball. It very much lives up to the promise of the reboot film series, as it delights in showing intense deadite brutality in ways that are both inventive and thrilling. It is fun to watch with a crowd. So, I think fans of the series, like myself, will be mostly happy with this latest entry in the film series. At the same time, and even though there are instances of really effective and impressive camerawork, I also think it has more blemishes than the other reboot films had, including the unconvincing CGI-character confrontation near the end, the messy use of flashbacks, and the unpleasant color palette. However, none of those blemishes were so problematic that they ruined the experience for me, and so I left the movie theater thinking that the franchise is still in a relatively good place. That said, I would like to see one of the next filmmakers have more fun with the property and make it feel a little bit more like Sam Raimi’s sequels.
7.5 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
