Movies & TV Evil Dead Burn Evil Dead Burn Is an Extreme, Gruesome, Darkly Fun Addition to the Series It turns out there are a LOT of uses for fountain pens. By Leah Schnelbach | Published on July 10, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures One of the most delightful things aspects of the Evil Dead franchise is how flexible it has turned out to be. It can be a classic teens in a haunted cabin in the woods movie, a slapstick comedy, a medieval Ray Harryhausen homage, a gritty look at addiction and recovery, a gory exploration of familial bonds—or, as in Evil Dead Burn, a slightly French extremity-tinged film about the complications of marrying into a troubled family. After restaurateur Will Price (George Pullar) dies in a car accident, his wife Alice (Souheila Yacoub) reluctantly joins the rest of his family for a funeral and memorial weekend at the family home, which has been handed off to Will’s younger brother, Joe (Hunter Doohan). Alice is close with Joe and his girlfriend, Thya (Luciane Buchanan), but her relationships with mother-in-law Susan (Tandi Wright) and father-in-law Edgar (Erroll Shand) are much more fraught. And Will’s grandmother, Polly (Maude Davey) seems to be in a stage of dementia where she only remembers the past, and has permanently confused Susan for her deceased sister, Bonnie. Susan is brittle and furious in a way that goes beyond her overpowering grief. She’s entirely martyred herself to the needs of her family, even saying she’s “nothing” without them, and obviously expects Alice to follow in her footsteps of caretaking, even in Will’s absence. Edgar is gruff, glaring, and starts off looking like some sort of paramilitary man who’s been dropped in by helicopter to merc everyone else in the movie. Polly openly hates and mistrusts everyone except Will. Both parents are angry with Joe for letting the house fall into disrepair, and needle him repeatedly about the writing career that still hasn’t gotten off the ground. Thya seems to be treated a little bit better than Alice, simply because Susan and Edgar are openly pissed that their son married a French girl. Susan plans to make Alice, her son’s widow, sleep on a shitty camp bed in the attic despite all the bedrooms downstairs, just to drive home that she still isn’t welcome. What I’m saying is that by the time everyone’s around a table having a post-funeral lunch, snarling at each other, insulting each other, berating Alice for saying that she might not want to keep running Will’s restaurant, this movie is already a full-blown horror. But of course there’s eerie Kandarian stuff in the attic, and of course Grandpa, long deceased, was up to some interesting work in the occult field. It also turns out some demons have already been targeting this family and are working their way in to destroy them. If you’ve seen the trailer, it’s one snippet of one scene from about halfway through Evil Dead Burn, and it’s a great taste of what the final two-third of the movie brings. Once the demons show up, the filmmakers barely give you a moment to breathe. The violence and gore are over-the-top, operatic, absolutely un-survivable by actual human beings. If you enjoy watching all the ways a human body can be ripped apart, you’ll probably dig this film. But there is more going on here than just splatter. The performances are all incredible horror movie performances, but I want to take a moment to especially highlight Souheila Yacoub’s work, as she embodies sorrow, regret, rage, numbness, bitterness, shock. She has to run through an entire grieving process, fend off her terrible in-laws, and be realistically terrified of demons, and I didn’t doubt her for a second. Especially rich is her relationship with Susan, and Tandi Wright is so good, all wounded, accusing eyes and long-suffering sighs. She even manages some stellar passive-aggression after the demon invasion is in full swing.   Director Sébastien Vaniček’s precious film, Infested, commented on xenophobia in Parisian culture via a terrifying spider invasion. Here he and co-screenwriter Florent Bernard aren’t doing a one-to-one “the demons equal grief” thing, but more fitting a story about an imploding family into the Evil Dead mythos. An absentee dad, a sister who falls terminally ill, a mother in the throes of dementia, the daughter who takes care of everyone—all of that is real, and difficult, but when the dad is absentee because he’s been researching demons that are real, it adds a whole new dimension. Bringing us into the story at the point where all the family trauma has been visited upon the next generation allows them to drop us into all the story just as the resentment and anger would have boiled over anyway, and then bringing the demons in to feast, is an inspired way to use supernatural horror to talk about real life. I do also want to make it clear, however, that this movie is a meat grinder. (Often a really blackly hilarious one.) A funeral is played for laughs. No pet or exposed limb or ear is safe. Basically every sharp or heavy object in the house gains Chekhovian significance at some point. (What the cheese grater was to Rise, an open dishwasher is to Burn. Delightful!) Weed-whackers, power drills, and serrated turkey carving knives, and, in one long set piece, pretty much the entire interior of a car, are all used to excellent effect. Fountain pens are used as weapons multiple times. There’s a surprising amount of supernaturally significant saliva. There is a gross, bloody, viscous kiss in this film that goes on for at least 30 seconds longer than it needs to—or at least, that’s what my audience’s reaction seemed to indicate. The film walks a fine line where most of the older members of the Price family are terrible, so it’s kind of fun to watch them get tortured, but also Alice, Joe, and Thya are decidedly not terrible, so I was still invested in them in a way that I’m really not with Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness. Evil Dead Burn links back to the Evil Dead Rise in the opening scene and in the de rigueur after-credits sequence, but aside from that it’s a standalone story taking place in the same universe as the others. The more you know about the franchise, the more fun it’ll be (there’s one particular moment with Alice and the Necronomicon that made me hoot with delight), but it also works on its own if you’re completely new to the films. This is also a dark story, much more in line with the tragedy of 2013’s Evil Dead reboot, I think, than the campy antics of Rise. But as I said up top, I’m incredibly impressed that these movies can encompass what ends up being a story of finding strength and moving on even when everything around you is telling you to give up and let the demons win. I’m not sure the deeper story always completely works, but I’m excited that Vaniček and Bernard took a big emotional swing with their Evil Dead movie, along with the big Grand Guignol one, and I’m excited to see where they, and the franchise, go next.[end-mark] The post <em>Evil Dead Burn</em> Is an Extreme, Gruesome, Darkly Fun Addition to the Series appeared first on Reactor.