A family turns into zombie-like demons one by one, leading to a bunch of bloodshed, gore spatter and swearing. Any families that watch Evil Dead Burn might well wish they could burn the memory from their collective minds.
The deadites are indeed evil. They’re mostly dead. But they’re certainly not subtle.
These demonic, zombie-like things would likely benefit from a bit more etiquette, a touch more introspection. It would mean fewer flying limbs for everyone.
Take the case of their encounter with the Price family. The Prices possess something called the Kandarian Dagger, a blade that’s the only sure way to dispatch a deadite outside the creative use of power tools. Had the deadites simply invited the Prices over for tea and gently asked for the knife, they likely would’ve gotten it. Susan Price has been begging her son Joseph to throw away all his grandfather’s occultic flotsam (of which the knife is a part) for years now. Why, Susan might even pay the deadites to haul the junk away, giving them some extra cash for blood transfusions.
Instead, a deadite (one formerly known as Jessica, apparently) loiters by a lake, kills two fishermen and jumps in front of a car conveniently driven by Susan’s other son, Will. Once she lands inside the car (through the windshield), she decapitates herself, utters a chilling message and then sets the car on fire, killing Will in the process.
Now, it would appear that killing the recipient of a message would hamper the message-delivery process. But nay! Will, naturally, becomes a deadite himself, albeit a charred one. But he’s in no hurry to make his presence known.
During Will’s cremation service, his father, Edgar, comes to say goodbye to his son one last time. Deadite Will begins knocking on the coffin lid. Edgar bashes open the coffin and—
Well, let’s just reiterate: Deadites are not subtle.
As you might imagine, positives are hard to come by in Evil Dead Burn. But the film does demonstrate the potential dangers of improperly used power tools. And broken toilets. And fountain pens. And car headrests. And—well, pretty much everything, really.
In the Evil Dead franchise, the deadites are called forth via a magic spell written in a book called the Necronomicon. Good ol’ Grandfather Price—collector of occultic antiquities and whatnot—leaves a helpful recording about the evil character of the deadites, creatures he says are so “malevolent, [it’s] as if the devil himself were here.”
That grounds Evil Dead Burn in a world with vaguely Christian underpinnings. These deadites aren’t just infected with some sort of reanimating virus (as we see in many a zombie tale): These are evil creatures who are likely freelancing for a far more diabolical, unseen entity.
When Susan tells a table full of family members that Will’s looking down at them from above, Will’s father (in the process of becoming a deadite himself) disagrees and says, “he’s down below.” Later, deadite Will tells someone that he indeed went to hell (which perhaps implies he’s on some sort of work furlough program).
The deadites come with a whole bunch of supernatural abilities, too. They can perch on ceilings, set whole lakes a-boiling and speak quite clearly even when they have car headrests stuck in their faces.
Despite Grandfather Price’s experience with the occult, the Prices we meet don’t appear to be particularly religious. Joseph hopes to write a novel hinged to the evidence his grandfather left behind, but he initially sees it as fodder for fiction, not a real-world threat. Will’s funeral service feels rather secular. In old video footage of Will’s wedding—marrying a critical character named Alice—we see all the trappings of a typical wedding but no obvious priest or pastor officiating.
Will and Alice (before Will’s untimely death) own and run what is later called a “restaurant,” but let’s not picture this as a place where you can order up a plate of pancakes. This is a raucous nightclub—and if they did serve pancakes, patrons would likely start pancake fights, and Will and Alice would be constantly scrubbing maple syrup off the walls.
Joseph celebrates a birthday in said club, and moviegoers are given a completely unnecessary and utterly salacious video collage of breasts and rears covered tightly and imperfectly by club-style clothing. (A number of male patrons aren’t wearing shirts at all.)
That evening, while watching Will and Alice fight, Joseph’s girlfriend, Thye, tells Joseph that they should never, ever get married.
A fully deadite Edgar plants a passionate kiss on fully living Susan, wherein the blood pooling in Edgar’s mouth drips down both of their chins to the floor in a red, saliva-fused goo. “You haven’t kissed me like that in years,” Susan says.
We see some of Alice’s midriff. During an argument with Alice, Will says that none of his past girlfriends made him lose control like she does.
A deadite shoots himself in the head three times—none of which impacts his ability to talk or move or kill. (While becoming a deadite, he tries to drive a knife through his arm, too—an act prevented by Alice.) Another deadite does apparently “die” after having her head smashed into a bloody pulp by a dishwasher door. Later, another (living) character has her face pushed into the goopy, cavernous maw left behind. A few deadites are undone by power tools (a circular bladed garden trimmer and a jackhammer, for starters). Others are dispatched by a magical knife. One deadite tries to cut off its own leg. A deadite has his face torn and his skull crushed by someone using bare hands. Deadites jam corkscrews into their own necks and press their faces against scorching hot radiators.
In the movie’s opening sequence, the deadite Jessica walks in front of Will’s speeding car, causing it to tumble several times down an embankment. Her body is now halfway in the car, and her gore-encrusted head slowly works itself loose from the rest of her body, eventually rolling onto the ground nearby.
The living are naturally subjected to plenty of bodily indignities as well. Someone dies after getting hit and ultimately impaled by a car’s headrest. A character falls into a dishwasher loaded with sharp implements and then gets pressed further into the blades. A slamming car door severs several fingers. Will is burned alive in his crashed car (and we later see his charred, still smoldering and sometimes glowing remains, shambling around). Someone has a leg pierced by a bit of rebar, forcing the character to painfully work the limb off the steel. A deadite stabs someone in the ear with a fountain pen. (The fountain pen is used again later on.) A dog is stabbed to death with a fork.
A man is essentially boiled in a lake: He crawls to shore but falls unconscious soon thereafter. When someone walks over him, stepping on his hand, the skin sloughs off, revealing bone and gore underneath. Another man is, somehow, attacked with fishing line. The lines and hooks wrap the guy up (we see one hook puncturing his eyelid) and drag him into a body of water, where something pulls him apart. We don’t see what, but when he’s pulled out of the water, the man is missing the lower part of his body, his spine and a bunch of innards trailing.
But for all that blood and gore, the most disturbing element for some may be Will and Alice’s abusive relationship. In flashbacks, we see the two engaged in angry arguments, and at one juncture Will grabs Alice’s face. (During the party at the club, Will roughly grabs Alice by the arm and pulls her, as well.) When Alice lifts up her shirt in a couple of scenes, we see a bad burn along the side of her abdomen. But we also see in those flashbacks a hot stove and a pot of boiling water—water that, we deduce, caused that terrible scar.
Someone is nearly suffocated with a shower curtain. People and deadites fight: They smash into walls, tumble down stairs, fall from some significant heights and are sometimes literally thrown around. A character gets tied up. A circular blade nearly carves into a living person’s head. (A deadite is attacked with the same blade, and his skull is split open—though the deadite seems to still operate just fine.) Someone gets stabbed in the eye with a shard of glass. Bodies are consumed in fire. People are choked with seatbelts. Someone is murdered off-camera; we see blood fly as the attack is carried out. Deadite Will can set things alight and burn people with a touch. Someone without legs drags herself along a street.
About 35 f-words and a dozen s-words. We also hear “a–” and “b–ch.” God’s name is misused three times. Jesus’ name is abused twice—once with an assist from an f-word.
During Joseph’s birthday party at Will and Alice’s “restaurant,” Alice suggests their party of four get another bottle of champagne. When Will suggests that perhaps a third bottle is a bit much, Alice says there’s nothing wrong with getting drunk on such occasions—and the movie clearly sides with Alice.
Alice’s cigarette use is another point of contention. Will would very much like to start a family, and he believes that Alice refuses to stop smoking as a way to avoid having kids. We see Alice and others smoke, and the movie turns Alice’s cigarettes into a symbol of freedom from and rebellion against her abusive husband.
Wine is served with a dinner. Polly, Susan’s dementia-stricken mother, is denied any. But she grabs a glass and drinks heartily when no one’s looking.
Will drives drunk, even though Joseph tries to stop him. (It’s a factor in his collision with the deadite that creates so much havoc.)
Someone vomits. The dementia-suffering Polly believes that someone is after her money—a recurring theme and joke throughout the film.
The Evil Dead franchise has been shambling around since 1978, originating with a 20-minute, $1,600-film by Sam Raimi called “Within the Woods.” It has morphed over time, moving from flat-out horror to high camp to somewhere in between.
But it has always been anchored to one key element. Gore.
That’s it. The franchise has never been interested in subtext or internal consistency or even quality (even though they’re often kindly reviewed and the first two films are considered cult classics). Give the franchise credit for its honesty and clarity of purpose: It knows what it fans come for, and it’ll give it to them—in bloody, organ-spattered spades.
Evil Dead movies have never been particularly interested in offering a coherent moral or message or even much hope beyond raw survival. But even by those cemetery-low standards, Evil Dead Burn seems especially vacuous and dispiriting.
In Evil Dead Burn, marriage is terrible. Friendships are pointless. Family is the root of all evil. Oh, and that’s not me just being needlessly antagonistic: Watch the trailer and you’ll read those exact words: “Family is the root of all evil.”
And it doesn’t stop there. The film tells us that getting drunk is just fine in certain circumstances, and the character who suggests otherwise is cast as the movie’s biggest villain. It suggests that smoking is a worthwhile way to declare your independence from oppressive forces—reinforcing a contention shared by many class-skipping 14-year-olds. The best defense against demonic forces isn’t prayer but power tools.
And while it’s spoon-feeding us these dubious messages, Evil Dead Burn is dumping jugs of blood on us and serving up a steady allotment of severed limbs.
The Evil Dead franchise has already queued up its next installment: Evil Dead Wrath is set to debut in 2028. But perhaps moviegoers will then take their own magic knife—their lack of financial support—and bury this franchise for good.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
