“Every family has its demons.
After her husband’s abrupt death, Alice seeks solace with his remaining family — descendants of a leading researcher on demonic possession. As her in-laws transform one by one into creatures that feed on fear, she comes to discover that the vows she took in life survive even in death.” – Letterboxd Synopsis
Evil Dead Burn has the same flaws as its predecessor, and those flaws stand out more with its story being weaker, its characters being less interesting, the setting not really hitting the notes that the apartment did, and the tone feeling a bit all over the place at times. I expected the dark humor and funny moments, and those moments were funny, but there were a handful of times where I found myself questioning if I should be laughing at this or not. It just got goofy. With all of that being said, I still found myself enjoying this movie a lot. The points it hits on, it really does well. And even if the characters fell flat for me, I like the attempt at telling another family oriented story, but a fucked up one. So while this movie is a bit of a step down from Rise, I enjoyed it all the same.
As confusing as this may sound in writing. The intro of Rise leads almost directly into the beginning of this movie, and we see how the intro happened at the very end of Rise. And one thing that I don’t think I talked about enough in the Rise review is how quick shit goes down in these movies. It’s like a roller coaster that goes from 0-100 almost instantly and kind of slows down here or there. And I loved it. I’m always down for a slow burn; it’s my favorite type of storytelling. But it is refreshing to have some interesting kills and gore within the first few minutes. And everything that goes down leads to (with a hilarious transition) the deadites hunting down a family in search of a dagger that has the ability to actually kill them.
I talked about in my Rise review how it felt like the ultimate survival horror movie, but this movie at so many points felt like Jack Baker’s Residence of Evil. The vibes are uncannily similar, that it just had to be an inspiration. Once we get to the house and things start ramping up, the story is still definitely about the dagger and the deadites trying to find it, but what really comes to the forefront is Alice dealing with this severely messed up family that she married into and battling her own trauma with them and her now dead husband. Once it focuses on that, the movie gets really good. The best thing about the deadites is how offensively truthful they are to torture people. All of their insults really felt like they hit way harder in this movie than the last because this family does have some serious issues that they would rather bury or deflect than actually deal with, and in the end it’s these same issues that burn them all to the ground.
All of these characters, outside of Alice and the brothers’ girlfriend, just straight up suck. They are clearly flawed/bad people in their own way, and this movie is about their nasty family dynamics. But like, they just suck so bad I did not care one bit about any of them. Until the movie started to heavily focus on Alice and her trauma. It’s always there, but it really does feel like it takes a backseat to the whole situation for a good chunk of the movie, and I forgot that she is actually the main character. But once it focuses in on her, this movie hits a stride that it maintains until the credits roll. I found myself rooting for her so hard. She’s gotta be one of my favorite final girls ever, and boy, did she go through hell in this movie, but I will always love someone facing their demons and triumphing over them.
Bro, the gore in these movies is insane. That’s like my one weakness when it comes to horror movies still. I rarely ever get jump scared anymore, and the usual gimmicky things stopped phasing me as I got older. But Gore? Especially at this level, is tough to stomach. Rise was one thing, but this movie takes it to a whole extra level. There were multiple points where I had to pause the movie and take a second, and there was even one moment where I audibly gagged at what was happening. It was super effective on me, and that’s completely thanks to the awesome visual effects. Very convincing, very visceral. And I loved it. There were some really cool looking shots in this movie as well, and fun framing choices. I will say, the snow in some of these scenes looked laughably fake as hell, though.
So yeah, Evil Dead Burn has its flaws for sure. But what it does well, it really does well. I have never seen a movie do gore so well that I had to pause multiple times, audibly gag, look away, and close my ears, and I loved every second of it. And when this movie fully starts focusing on Alice and her struggles, it hits a new gear and never gets out of it. Which means the movie ends on a high note. I’m excited to see what comes next in this franchise, and definitely sometime in the future I have to take a look at the Ash era of the franchise.
Evil Dead Burn – 8/10
