Evil Dead Burn, directed by Sebastien Vanicek, who coscripted with his Infested collaborator Florent Bernard, is another manic segment in the long-running series created by Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell (who've performed as producers throughout the franchise).
Like other Evil Dead installments, this one holds Faustian tropes, Lovecraftian lore and exaggerated horror, warning viewers that if one plays with fire, one will get burned.
In this instance, we're introduced to Alice, a headstrong but heedless, French woman played by Souheila (Planet B) Yacoub, whose controlling, restauranteur spouse, Will, played by George Puller, dies in a scorching, Deadite-steered, auto accident. After Will's funeral, Alice visits the family's dilapidating mansion, discovering that its members are as controlling as the man she married. It all leads to Will's repugnant resurrection, which revolves around a dagger talisman, its purpose revealed through a makeshift Book of the Dead (Necronomicon Ex-Mortis). However, before Will makes his smoldering re-entry, a Deadite vanguard ascends to torment Alice and the clan because, well, that's the silly sort of thing Deadites do.
Possession (with all its warped baggage) is the key here, and to varying degrees, it's always been an Evil Dead trait, detectable even in Lee Cronin's Mummy spinoff. In fact, Cronin's Evil Dead Rise returned the tactic to the forefront, enforced by Alyssa Sutherland's demonic alteration. Vanicek achieves and amplifies comparable consequences, stringing the Deadite's physical manipulation throughout the crumbling estate, as Alice surveys Book of the Dead passages to find ways to survive. (This establishes a Night of the Living Dead imprint, though staged in reverse, with dashes of The Exorcist and an underlying "Fall of the House of Usher," Hellraiser and Paranormal Activity, family subtext that loops back to this chapter's combustible label.)
Along with Yacoub and Puller, co-headliner Hunter (Wednesday/Daredevil: Born Again) Doohan plays Joseph, Will's younger brother (a sensitive, amateur demonologist), who engages in several of the movie's best, Deadite battles. He's joined by Maude Davey's Polly (the dementia-ridden grandmother), Tandi Wright's Susan (the calm but deceitful mother), Erroll Shand's Edgar (the impassioned father and the movie's most memorable, Deadite stooge) and Luciane Buchanan's Thya (Joseph's good-hearted gal). The ensemble exists to bounce off Alice or maybe it's vice versa; either way, the reciprocal outcome is upending and above all, messy and mangled.
The delirious violence strikes fast, as a slow, ominous snowfall mounts, thus fastening the story's claustrophobic doom. Though Alice is an accidental detainee in the conundrum, the story's madhouse allusion works as an inherited sentence for the family due to its by-association sins, which (as the plot progresses) connects to a grandfather who (by implication) knew Raymond Knowby, the archeologist referenced in earlier, Evil Dead movies. (Here's hoping this revelation is explored further in future pictures.)
Considering that Evil Dead has been retreaded several times over, it's reassuring that the basic formula endures, but then the same can be said of its fans, who've embraced the franchise's diversity, which ranges from the more-or-less somber Evil Dead 1981/2013 and Evil Dead Rise to the wacky, Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, Army of Darkness and Starz' Ash vs Evil Dead. A few critics did predict, after all, that the initial movie would die on the vine, despite Stephen King's praise of it. (For one, Gene Siskel went so far as to call it a Sneak Previews "Dog of the Week.") That we've been bestowed Evil Dead Burn is a testament to the saga's resilience, though this time it comes with extra-exorbitant brutality (i.e. more bodies slamming the walls and floors and along with it, all that gore, gore, gore). The result could leave some with substantial, psychosomatic aches and pains by the time the credits roll.
No matter the possible (probable?) symptoms, Evil Dead Burn performs as a cinematic dark ride, framed in such a way that it could be taken as a stand-alone, even as it resumes and inflates the mythology's established mayhem, lit by a promise for more. And with Evil Dead Wrath within prequel range, the franchise looks geared to become all the more prevalent, if not undying.
