Another movie, another reason to lament a franchise not getting its due. Perhaps in the future I will get appropriately jaded, but for now, I mourn.
The funny thing is, Evil Dead Burn is the best thing to happen to the Evil Dead movie series in years (leaving the TV series to another unfairly cancelled discussion entirely). Unlike the overly serious, blood-drenched Evil Dead Rise, there’s no foregone conclusion as to who will make it out. Stick a pregnant woman and a little kid among the would-be victims, and it’s pretty easy to guess.
But Evil Dead Burn will not only keep you guessing as to who the survivor will be, it also brings back some of that devilish humor the franchise was known for, along with the required blood and mayhem. And it’s also one of its most refreshingly subversive entries. True, it doesn’t compare to the original movies and protagonist Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), who was both a paragon of all-American masculinity and a parody of it, but this latest splatterfest does set it sights on a no less sacred concept, one that the culture upholds with the devotion and rigidity of the most devout evangelical: The Family.
Director Sébastien Vanicek and his co-writer Florent Bernard previously took aim at xenophobia in their native country in their previous collaboration with the French horror film Infested, and discomfort is once again the goal for Evil Dead Burn. For all the terror, and general chaos that takes place in the isolated, run-down family home, there’s also a sly subversive glint as the movie toys with the unfortunates caught up in it and the audience watching, not only as to who will emerge alive, but who the actual hero is.
It’s a refreshing take since movies can’t be mere playgrounds for creativity and increasingly demented humor; no, they have to be About Something, and the modern incarnations of the series have acted accordingly. For the 2013, it was addiction and impending adulthood and its responsibilities, for Evil Dead Rise, it was motherhood gone wrong, which had to be set right by a pregnant heroine who must choose life in every sense and make herself worthy, fitting for a director whose next film encapsulated every xenophobic white man’s fear.
For Evil Dead Burn, the culprit is grief, and as things progress - or accurately, devolve - its culpability. As The Family gathers for the funeral of one of its sons, Will (George Pullar), it’s clear that parents Susan (Tandi Wright) and Edgar (Erroll Shand) are channeling their pain into resentment at his widow Alice (Souheila Yacoub), who is clearly considering leaving the restaurant they shared together for her native France. As a newcomer to the family and a foreigner, she’s viewed as an interloper twice over, even if Will’s passive brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and his girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan) try to be more understanding.
Once the Deadites arrive, there’s no mercy for their failings, and the heartbreaking thing is what the violence reveals. As the family battles for survival, the way Alice flees, curls up into a ball at the prospect of pain, locks herself in the bathroom, and struggles with PTSD and flashbacks so painful they could pass for a Deadite possession in itself, she emerges as an abused woman who has suffered at the hands of not only her husband, but its toxic patriarch and a mother who is passivity personified, who willingly eroded herself and justified it in the name of Family, passing a lifetime of failing to act down to her surviving son Joseph.
So when Alice finally gets to shine, she not only gets to call out these people for the rot inherent in their lives, she even gets a bigger chainsaw. Well, it isn’t exactly a chainsaw, but you get the idea. Many reviewers have also reacted accordingly to this indictment of a clan whose connection to the Deadites can’t be excused for what they’ve let themselves come to. But then…in-laws, amirite?
Grade: B+