Evil Dead Burn: Movie Review

Cast: Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Erroll Shand, and Maude Davey.
Director: Sébastien Vaniček 

After the success of 2013's Evil Dead and Evil Dead Rise, the latest outing for the Deadites continues to follow the insidiously evil trend of burrowing under the surface.

This time, it follows Souheila Yacoub's Alice, a French wife whose husband Will is killed in a car crash after the pair of them row at a nightclub while out celebrating Will's brother Joseph's birthday. But when Alice attends the funeral and is forced to head back to her in-laws for the wake, their hostility begins to bubble to the surface, something exacerbated by the arrival of the Deadites in their home.

Evil Dead Burn is less interested in going for the subtle, crafting a family reunion from hell which spills over in blood and violence.

Vaniček isn't interested in holding back and while the opening sequence feels a little schlocky as a couple of people are dispatched while out on a fishing trip, it ties together the Evil Dead Rise threads that were left open before.

However, mixed in with the familiar ground-level cameras that hurtle through the woods, there's a vein of very black humour that elicits some unexpected laughs throughout - albeit dark ones that don't do much to alleviate the bloodletting that's unleashed on screen.

With a love of practical FX (apart from one sorely misjudged final sequence that feels like the Deadite version of Terminator 2: Judgement Day), Evil Dead Burn deserves plaudits for full committing to the horror bit, as it suddenly scales from 1 to 100 with little warning.

Key to all of this though is New Zealand actor Erroll Shand, whose grieving father is hiding some deep resentments that Deadites bring to the surface in a sickeningly shocking way. Shand more than delivers in this role, setting up a tragic arc that erupts at the very start of proceedings and which carries the film through to its extremes.

Yacoub's Alice has a more subtle approach to her domestic violence sub-plot and while Vaniček does as much as he can to keep that bubbling under, the movie itself doesn't feel like it does anything new with the issue in this particular context. And certainly the final sequences, while intended to give closure, weaken the drama that's unfolded for Alice.

Plus, a few character decisions make little sense overall, especially given what's been seen previously in the film - and it's a few moments like this which take viewers out of the intensity of what's unfurling.

That said, on the whole, Evil Dead Burn delivers a deliciously upsetting time at the movies, with sequences of horror guaranteed to have you squirming in your seat (all manner of limbs and orifices are assaulted), but its enduring tale of the horror and lies families tell each other is its strongest sell.

It's psychological terror at its worst, Evil Dead style.