The sixth installment in the Evil Dead franchise has finally arrived. Three years after Evil Dead Rise, we are now welcomed back into the world of Deadites with Evil Dead Burn - and I can totally assure you, that this movie truly does live up to the title.
The moment I saw that absolute killer teaser trailer, my excitement went through the roof. Watching that extended long take of the Deadites unleashing pure chaos was not only incredibly effective, but it instantly set the tone and showed real promise for some brutally creative horror - and then once I learned that the movie would centre around a dysfunctional family, I was sold. Not necessarily because I relate to them, but because they reflect something universal. No family is perfect. Every family has its own flaws, conflicts, and unresolved issues - and if there's any horror franchise capable of turning those tensions into something truly nightmarish, it's Evil Dead.
So the big question remains, did the story actually utilise the dysfunctional family trope to its fullest potential? In some ways yes. But in other ways... maybe not.
When it comes to the good. This movie clearly understands the emotional weight and tension that comes with the sudden loss of a family member and how that can very easily tear a family apart - there was one big scene in particular where all of the bottled-up anger, resentment, and emotional conflict between all the characters finally begins to spill over, and it's easily one of the movie's strongest moments - tension fills the room which almost becomes suffocating as every conversation threatens to erupt into violence, creating this uneasy feeling of anxiety while you uncomfortably wait for the gruesome pay off.
This is where the bad comes in, once the Deadites outbreak begins and all hell breaks loose, is the very moment you realise that the movie is more interested in glorified set pieces then exploring the emotional depth that the setup promises. The family dynamic is present, but not fully fleshed out enough in order for the audience to even care about what happens to them. We understand from the very beginning that these characters are deeply fractured, but the movie doesn't spend enough time exploring why they are the way that they are or how their past has shaped the people they've become - as a result, causing some of the emotional conflicts to not land with the weight they could have had.
Take Ari Aster's Hereditary (2018) for example, what makes that family dynamic so compelling is that the movie gives us a deep understanding of each character's emotional baggage, their flaws, and how they continuously feed into one another's negativity. You can empathize with everyone's perspective to some degree, even when they're making terrible decisions because you understand the pain that's driving them - that complexity is what makes the family feel both painfully real and painfully tragic.
So when things finally do go all supernatural, the horror becomes twice as effective and leaves a bigger impact on the audience - sparking debates on who was really at fault, whether anyone was truly the "bad" person, or if the entire family was simply trapped in a cycle of grief, resentment, and miscommunication. Evil Dead Burn hints at that same level of complexity, but it never digs deeply enough into its characters to fully earn those kinds of conversations.
Despite having that being said, the Evil Dead movies overall has always been a franchise I've deeply admired for the major influence it's had on modern horror, specifically the helping of popularising the blend of horror and comedy in a way that felt genuinely unique and entertaining - out of every Evil Dead film we've had over the years, this is the one that, for me, had the most potential to stand above the rest. The premise, the family dynamic, the direction the trailers were hinting at, it all felt like the perfect recipe for something truly special. Sadly, it just didn't quite come together in the way I'd hoped.
