Evil Dead Burn Review (Film, 2026

content warning: blood, gore, violence against women, violence against children, violence against animals, grieving, xenophobia, racism, domestic violence, foul language, alcohol and tobacco use

Now that I've seen Evil Dead Burn, I get why the trailer for so long was more or less an uncut action sequence from some point in the film. If they actually led with all the heavy material writer/director Sébastien Vanicek and writer
Florent Bernard tackle in this new sequel, I honestly don't know how many people would be lining up to see this film on opening weekend.

Without spoiling too much, Evil Dead Burn follows Alice, a French immigrant in an abusive relationship with her husband Will, and her in-laws as they cope with the sudden and unexpected loss of Will. Alice and Will had a fight in front of Will's brother Joseph and his long-term girlfriend Tina, resulting in Will driving away drunk and losing his life. Tensions are clearly high at the funeral, as nothing Alice can do while medicated and in the throws of grief is enough for Will's family. They drive from the funeral to the old family home where chaos ensues.

So when I say in the content warning that the film deals with everything from grieving to xenophobia to domestic violence to racism, I'm not exaggerating. That's the literal text. Rich white American family who never accepted the foreign wife or non-white girlfriend finally stop hiding their true feelings while grieving their golden child. Sundance could never.

This is the challenge of Evil Dead Burn, and I appreciate the attempt to use this format to deal with serious issues. Evil Dead (2013) pulled off a similar split focus, using the growing threat of the Deadite rising as a literal metaphor for drug abuse and addiction. Evil Dead Rise, too, tackled issues of parental alienation, divorce, and broken families. Serious topics in horror are not bad on face value; it's the execution that makes the difference.

Evil Dead Burn is a mean, shocking film with spectacular gore set pieces, great fights, and a cool feat of needle-threading to connect the new trilogy to the original trilogy and the TV series. Vanicek knows how to make the audience wince and scream, which is great for a film clearly coming from the school of New French Extremity. You survive a film like Evil Dead Burn; you don't necessarily enjoy it.

Less successful is the approach to all the serious issues. It's a lot to tackle and not everything is successful. I think the most successful exploration is on the xenophobia and racism being freed as the family drops their guard in grief. The blood relatives are banding together and looking for anywhere to point blame on the death of their golden boy Will. Tensions were clearly already strained between Alice and the family and the grief combined with the stress of the Deadites attacking pushes them to let'er rip.

While there is certainly potential to explore domestic violence in horror, and many great horror films have anchored themselves in that subject matter, Evil Dead Burn perhaps should not be one of them. There is quite a lot of victim blaming even before the Deadites start to weaponize family secrets against the living, and a recurring chorus of "you stayed because you liked it" is, frankly, disgusting; even more so when you realize how many people in the family say it before the Deadites have any control over them. It's rough. I see the vision for this, but it's just an added layer of cruelty far too common in public discourse to successfully land as a lane of commentary in a splatter film.

Evil Dead Burn has a lot to praise in its technical execution, from the quality of effects to the acting across the cast. The subject matter is what should decide if you watch. On the wrong day, I probably would've walked out to maintain my peace.

Evil Dead Burn is playing in theaters.