Evil Dead Burn (2026)

  

Synopsis

When her husband dies, widow Alice spends an awkward weekend with her husband's family. Things goes to (literal) Hell when forces unleashed by the Book of the Dead descend on the family's home.

Review

While different, this film is an Evil Dead flick through and through. Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert the main producers, with Bruce Campbell and Lee Cronin (Evil Dead Rise) serving as executive producers. The film's director, Sébastien Vaniček, is French and it shows. There are several French songs that play during the film and Alice, the protagonist, is as well. The cast all do a stellar job playing their rolls. Alice is a great protagonist. She also has one of the funniest scenes in the franchise. 

The gore and scares are top notch. I do have reservations about some of it. Evil Dead (2013) contained off screen violence against a dog. While brief the canine violence in Evil Dead Burn happens on screen during an extremely tense scene. While that scene bothered me, there was another that really stuck out to me in a new way. Instead of focusing on person being tormented and attacked by a Deadite, the camera focuses on Alice trying to escape the carnage. However, you still see the carnage happening in the background as a character is thrown around and brutalized. There’s something about this horrific action happening around the focal point, rather than being the focal point that was different in the best ways.

Another reason the film felt different is that unlike previous installments, I only cared about 2 (maybe 2.5) of the cast members. Normally I root for everyone to survive but honestly couldn’t wait to see some of these bastards bite it.

The film contains several connections to previous films. The first Deadite we see is Jessica, who is also the first (and last) Deadite we see in Evil Dead Rise. During a recording of Joseph and Will’s grandfather date 1983, he mentions there was a warning to not read from the books. This is probably a reference to Knowby’s warning from the first film. Some new franchise lore mentions the Circle of Wise Men. Given the name, I’m assuming they have a connection to the Wise Man from Army of Darkness. A news clipping mentioned four people dying in a fire is shown and probably a reference to my favorite Evil Dead, the 2013 film. The post credits scene also has a direct link to the previous film. I’ve also read that Ash is in a picture in the film, though I missed it.

Evil Dead Burn is a great addition to the franchise. It felt true to its Deadite roots, but also did it’s own thing. 

In Your Game

There’s definitely a lot in this one to expand into game content and I will eventually do that. For now I’ll just make a Cinematic Unisystem suggestion, since that’s what the Army of Darkness RPG uses. I’d use the Watcher quality from the Buffy game to represent members of the Circle of Wisemen.