1 of 5 | Souheila Yacoub stars in “Evil Dead Burn,” in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
In the Evil Dead series of films, a reel-to-reel recording of an incantation always unleashes the evil dead. In Evil Dead Burn, in theaters Friday, another recording leads the evil dead to its professor’s grandchildren.
Will Price (George Pullar) is married to Alice (Souheila Yacoub) but is volatile and uses the language of abusers to blame her for “bringing this out of” him. When driving drunk, Will hits a demon deadite who states the evil dead’s plans to find his family.
At the funeral, Alice endures Will’s parents, Edgar (Erroll Shand) and Susan (Tandi Wright). She’s already friends with his brother, Joseph (Hunter Doohan), and his girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan). Joseph has been listening to his grandfather’s old recordings.
Even before the evil dead reveal themselves at a Price family dinner, the family drama is almost as scary. It’s clear Susan never liked Alice, and when they pressure her to take over Will’s business, it’s overstepping even in better times.
The Price family home is still remote enough for evil dead carnage to ensue without any nearby help. Unlike a cabin in the woods, however, there are more modern accouterments for the demons to torment the Prices.
Director Sebastien Vanicek still does the zooming-through-the-woods shots, locks one deadite in the basement, and uses power tools as Evil Dead fans have come to expect. He has some clever camera moves to create some new dynamics in the family home too.
A highlight is a living room fight in front of a TV playing Will and Alice’s wedding video. Additional set pieces on the stairs and in the chimney are also welcome additions to Evil Dead canon.
The trailer gave away some good ones, but there are still plenty of outrageous surprises. Vanicek and co-writer Florent Bernard came up with many mutilations we haven’t seen in an Evil Dead movie before.
Household implements are also used in the most painful ways. It’s hard to top the cheese grater in Evil Dead Rise, but Burn makes some valiant efforts. Vanicek and Bernard also establish the inventory early, so it is more effective when those objects become weapons.
Some animal violence is used for shock value and it’s unnecessary. Evil Dead Burn has the goods and in 2026 it’s a cheap shot.
The demon acting is great. Shand truly seems unstoppable when Edgar turns, which is not a spoiler because he’s the first person Will’s corpse transfers to after the funeral.
When Thya turns, as the trailer revealed, Buchanan really makes a show of pulling out the car seat headrest that impaled her and gesturing to wounds she then self-inflicts.
Sam Raimi’s first three movies went from extreme horror to slapstick comedy to epic adventure. Recent entries by other directors have returned to the more extreme tone, though not without some humor.
Vanicek cuts from the car hitting the deadite to a woman twerking in Will’s club. Construction near the funeral home drowns out the service. These aren’t the sort of Three Stooges bits that befell Bruce Campbell, but they’re dark comedy in the face of mortality.
Evil Dead Burn is also faithful to the mythology Raimi established. 43 years later, it shows there can still be new pages of the Necronomicon to explore.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
