EVIL DEAD BURN unleashes the franchise’s most savage and terrifying ride to date, blazing onto big screens with an all-new chapter of carnage and demonic mayhem. After the loss of her husband, a woman seeks solace with her in-laws in their secluded family home. As one by one they are transformed into Deadites—turning the gathering into a family reunion from hell—she comes to discover that the vows she took in life live on… even in death.
What We Thought:
Evil Dead Burn is a thousand times better than Evil Dead Rise, but I still can’t get into any of the movies after the original trilogy. I grew up on Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness films starring Bruce Campbell and because of that have certain expectations from movies that have the Evil Dead name in their title.
Like Evil Dead Rise, Evil Dead Burn has a cold open taking place at a lake. I thought Rise’s cold open was the only good part of that movie, for Burn it feels exactly the same, but it does at least tie into the rest of the film. Burn is about a family dealing with the death of a loved one. His wife, brother and brother’s wife are joined by his parents and grandmother at his funeral. The father wants a final goodbye with his son and soon the Evil Dead ravages the family back at their beat up home.
The positives of the film are the gore and violence. Like Rise, there’s no limit on blood and gore. The kills are solid and the crowd definitely reacted to a lot that was going on. The major negative is that yet again, it doesn’t feel like an Evil Dead film. It lacks the camp, low-budget indie film vibe that the Raimi movies had. When I wrote the review for Evil Dead Rise I said the title should be Evil Dead Presents and I have to say that again here. If it was Evil Dead Presents: Whatever, I’d have different expectations. Other than the Book of the Dead and Deadites, there’s nothing about these movies that I would say feels like the classic Raimi/Campbell flicks.
If you aren’t familiar with the Evil Dead franchise you’ll probably love Evil Dead Burn. If you think the 2013 Evil Dead reboot and Evil Dead Rise are great films, you’ll probably love Evil Dead Burn. If you like the OG trilogy, you probably won’t. It’s an upgrade over Rise, but I still can’t say I look forward to these films.
The Nerds Templar 