Nobody on the planet was cooking as hard as Sam Raimi was when he unleashed The Evil Dead into the universe back in 1981. Made with no money and a handful of friends, this brutal, psychotic shocker effectively changed the game, ensuring that the young filmmaker would have a career for decades to come. And now, 45 years later, the franchise has spawned four sequels, one remake (that I personally choose to view as a sequel), a television series, multiple comic books, multiple video games, and a lingering question: what makes an Evil Dead movie an Evil Dead movie?
This question has come up a lot since the 2013 remake, which moved the series into a more contemporary setting, and thus a more modern horror sensibility, which continued with 2013’s Evil Dead Rise. Critics of the later entries typically cited their lack of humor and camp, while fans were more forgiving of tue change of tone, citing the wildly varying tone across the original trilogy. At the end of the day, Raimi has been a producer for every entry, so we can assume that whatever flavor each new entry takes, it has his seal of approval. This is good enough for me, although I can certainly see why many fans of the original trilogy have been less enthused about the more recent sequels.
The latest entry, Evil Dead Burn, is tonally furthest from Raimi’s trilogy, but for my money, it still features enough of the hallmarks of the series to be right at home within it. It’s the most plot heavy, to be sure, and it’s so mean-spirited that if there were any attempts at humor, I sure as shit didn’t see them. Even so, I spent most of its runtime with a cheeseball grin on my face that you couldn’t cut off with a chainsaw (or an electric meat trimmer, cheese grater, or claws of a Deadite).
Evil Dead Burn features insane gore, Chekhov’s power tools/kitchen appliances, buckets of practical blood, chaotic-but-smooth direction, and absolutely no regard for the well-being of the characters. Anyone can die at any moment, and they do. If you look closely, Sam Raimi’s trademark car makes a sneaky appearance alongside Bruce Campbell’s trademark smiling mug — yep, this is an Evil Dead movie through and through.
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Alice (Souheila Yacoub) is very recently widowed. After her abusive husband’s mysterious death (which ties directly to the wraparound story from Evil Dead Rise), she is forced to spend a bit of quality post-funeral time with her in-laws, neither of whom have any respect for her, nor any idea of what a monster their son was. The weekend is already off to a bad start, but things get much worse when Alice’s father-in-law (Erroll Shand) starts to change. His drunken, grieving dismissiveness soon gives way to full Deadite possession, and folks, the sickness is spreading.
A beautiful thing about the Evil Dead universe is that there are no rules to Deadite possession. It’s not transmitted by bite or by touch, but rather by random chance. Once the magic passages are read out of the Necronomicon, anything and everything is on the table (my pet theory is that the only way to avoid possession is by copping a cocky attitude — badasses don’t get got in this world). What makes this entry a bit different is that the Deadites actually have a mission beyond the chaos: they are here to retrieve the Kandarian dagger, a blade that can banish the evil back to whatever fucked up realm it came from. The Deadites have reason to believe that said dagger is residing somewhere in the home where Alice and fam are staying.
Once the carnage starts, what follows is a startlingly brutal parade of violence and gore. Director/co-writer Sébastien Vanicek is clearly channeling his own cinematic cultural roots: this entry is very inspired by the New French Extremity (think Martyrs, Haute Tension, Calvaire, or, perhaps most fittingly, Inside). This makes for a more relentlessly shocking entry where the gore is less about circus-like fun, and more about testing the audience to see what they can handle. It also means front-loading the film with images of household items that will potentially be used to relieve someone of their bodily connectivity. If you’re a fan, and you know what the filmmakers are up to, this is so so so much fun.
Two things set this apart from the bulk of the series so far. The original trilogy, for all their cinematic panache, aren’t really about anything. It wasn’t until the remake that filmmakers began to attach story to the plot, and Burn features the most story of all. It proves to be not just a show of carnage, but a mature and terrifying meditation on spousal abuse, and the way that someone’s crimes can be paved over by the desire to whitewash their memory in the wake of their passing.
The second thing which makes this entry unique is the overuse of CGI in the final act. While this isn’t the first time that the series has moved away from practical effects, it’s certainly the most egregious example. And while the images created are very cool, nothing on screen couldn’t be done practically, and it’s really disappointing to see. It’s a direction that I’d hate for the series to go. Even with the energy of Evil Dead intact, it’s when the film utilizes full post-production effects instead of in-camera ingenuity that it starts to feel like any old possession film. This is not the way. Evil Dead is better than that.
This, however, is only a portion of the film, and up until that point the direction is as chaotic and kinetic as it should be. One standout sequence involves a single take which focuses on one character crawling their way to safety while Deadites attack another character in the background. It’s an astounding feat of blocking and choreography that proves to be a high point in the entire series. I pray to the movie gods that there will one day be a physical media release with some behind the scenes material on this scene.
Word to the wise: stay through the credits. There are two extra scenes.
See you next year for Evil Dead Wrath!
Directed by Sébastien Vanicek
Written by Sébastien Vanicek, Florent Bernard
Starring Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan
Rated R, 110 minutes
