Evil Dead Burn (United States, 2026)

Sometimes an actor/character becomes so inextricably entwined with a franchise that moving in "a different direction" without them can be a difficult process. It's like that with Bruce Campbell's Ash and The Evil Dead. This is the seventh Evil Dead project (including the original trilogy, the TV series Ash vs Evil Dead, the reboot, and Evil Dead Rise) but the first one in which Campbell does not have at least a minimal acting presence (he appeared in a post-credits sequence in the Evil Dead remake and had a voice role in Evil Dead Rise). His complete absence (although he gets an executive producer credit) creates a hole that director Sébastien Vaniček can't quite fill, no matter how much gore and dark humor he throws up on screen.

Distilled to their essence, the Evil Dead movies are zombie stories. For the most part, they tend to be pretty bleak and, at their best, are infused with twisted humor. The iconic image remains Ash with a chainsaw replacing his severed arm. Vaniček does his best to honor Raimi's legacy (including the famous POV shots) but never quite escapes from the conventional zombie aesthetic. Despite the occasional Evil Dead vibe, the movie feels more like something out of George Romero's playbook.

That doesn't mean Evil Dead Burn is bad; just that it's not special. The movie follows the familiar horror template of gathering a group of characters in a restricted space and killing or turning them one by one. In this case, the location is an isolated rural house where a family has gathered to mourn the death of their favored son, William (George Pullar). Present are William's wife, Alice (Souheila Yacoub); his parents, Susan (Tandi Wright) and Edgar (Erroll Shand); his brother, Joseph (Hunter Doohan); Joseph's girlfriend, Thya (Luciane Buchanan); and senile granny Polly (Maude Davey). We learn early on that William's relationship with Alice was in meltdown at the time of his death due to uncontrolled angry outbursts. During an awkward dinner, Edgar starts showing homicidal impulses that he takes out on the family dog. Pretty soon, the body count mounts, and the survivors barricade themselves inside with the hope that this tactic will keep them alive through the night.

Evil Dead Burn doesn't skimp on grisly scenes. One can't argue that Vaniček doesn't commit to the material. The film contains one of the most memorably graphic kisses in recent memory that's not for the faint of heart. It's gruesome and grotesque but has a trainwreck quality that defies the viewer to look away. There's a nifty bit of camerawork in a single-shot sequence showing one character crawling on the floor while chaos erupts around them. And there's some Raimi-esque humor in evidence, particularly in one scene involving a stair chair.

It becomes apparent fairly early that the film's central figure is Alice. The problem is, Alice is no Ash. When she finally gets her hands on a chainsaw stand-in, she doesn't use it particularly effectively. In fact, she's not an especially forceful character; her tragic backstory (which ultimately feels unnecessary) is force-fed through rapid-fire flashbacks, and she lacks the requisite toughness to take on the deadites. The standouts are Maude Davey, whose Polly is used primarily for comedic purposes, and Erroll Shand, whose Edgar is a deliciously nasty piece of work who uses self-inflicted wounds as a form of cosmetic surgery.

As generic zombie films go, Evil Dead Burn is middling. It does what it sets out to do and pretty much delivers what one might reasonably expect. But it lacks the qualities that made the better Evil Dead entries (especially Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness) so thoroughly enjoyable. This is much in the vein of Lee Cronin's Evil Dead Rise as a film that genericizes aspects of franchise lore. With the horror genre as a whole turning out more interesting and offbeat stories, this one feels almost retro in its scope, scale, and intent. And that left me a little disappointed. Perhaps not so groovy.

Evil Dead Burn (United States, 2026)