Review: ‘Evil Dead Burn’ Trades Camp for Carnage—But Is It for the Lesbians?

Evil Dead Burn is not for the faint of heart or those not seated in the theater with a desire for Grand Guignol levels of bloodshed. It’s a nasty piece of work, rife with stabbings, gougings, slashings, decapitations, and flayings that are unrelentingly gruesome and utterly gnarly. But for those who crave the gore and the gush, your time has come, as this latest chapter in the franchise—the sixth (TV series notwithstanding)—proves there is still plenty of horror and bodily harm to be mined from the series Sam Raimi once created with very little money and a whole lot of gumption. That said,  though, much of the camp and humor that once characterized these films has been put to the side.

Here, French filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček (Infested) steps behind the camera, and the result feels like an infusion of the New French Extremity movement of the early 2000s through the lens of Evil Dead. Many of the hallmarks of the series are here: the Deadites, the Kandarian incantation, the Necronomicon, and the magical demon-killing dagger. But this film is far meaner and nastier than any that have come before, which is saying something.

This time around, we’re introduced to the Price family, an upper-middle-class clan in the midst of mourning the loss of their eldest son. His widow, Alice (Souheila Yacoub), becomes our proxy and entry point into the story alongside the younger brother, Joseph (Hunter Doohan). Unbeknownst to Alice, her in-laws’ bloodline has had run-ins with Kandarian demons in the past and has once again found itself in the crosshairs of these vicious demonic forces, which begin possessing, then slicing and dicing, their way through its members.

The film works exceedingly well as a visceral shocker. The effects are masterful, and the propulsive pace rockets viewers through increasingly horrifying set pieces that will either shock or thrill, depending on your threshold for onscreen carnage. Yacoub’s Alice delivers a strong performance as a woman simply trying to survive unbelievable and horrifying circumstances, all set against the backdrop of her own—albeit ambivalent—grief and trauma. Meanwhile, Hunter Doohan’s boy-next-door sweetness plays well into the terror and disbelief he faces as he watches his family fall prey to demonic possession one by one.

Evil Dead movies are known just as much for their kinetic camerawork—which helped make Raimi famous—and their slapstick humor as they are for their blood splatter. While Vaniček certainly hits the mark with the latter, his take on the series’ signature camerawork is less zany POV and more gritty, immediate, and caught up in the chaos. One sequence, in particular, has more in common with Saving Private Ryan than Army of Darkness. There is little of the Three Stooges-inspired slapstick Raimi infused into the franchise, but there are moments of dark humor that elicit laughter born more from the release of tension than genuine mirth. Raimi purists may struggle with this shift in tone, but those who have long wanted to see the franchise return to its more transgressive, mean-spirited roots will find plenty here to squirm over—and cheer for.

But is Evil Dead Burn for the lesbians? Those in the audience looking for an explicitly lesbian narrative—or even much in the way of queer subtext—will be left wanting. Aside from Doohan’s presence as an out actor, there’s nothing immediately queer about the film itself. This is a movie made first and foremost for horror fans and devotees of the Evil Dead series.

Of course, lesbians and sapphics are hardly a monolith. For those who love a good, transgressive, blood-soaked horror movie, Evil Dead Burn is an absolutely scorcher.