Evil Dead Burn (2026 | USA/New Zealand/France | Sébastien Vaniček | 110 minutes)
Of all the horror franchises to assault the public consciousness over the last 50 years, The Evil Dead catalog has proven to be one of the most durable—and surprisingly consistent—properties in the genre canon.
Two key elements have factored into the series’ durability. For one, it’s built on a potent high-concept central conceit: A spell read from the Necronomicon (AKA the Book of the Dead) causes demon-possessed corpses (Deadites, in Evil Dead parlance) to rise and raise literal hell. That skeletal framework’s allowed different directors to stir together whatever combination of horror and humor suits their sensibilities.
Ever since the original Evil Dead splattered onto movie screens in 1981, the franchise’s primary architects—director Sam Raimi, producer Rob Tapert, and original trilogy leading man/producer Bruce Campbell—have also exercised a laudable amount of quality control on anything bearing the Evil Dead name. Michael Myers, Freddy Kruger, and Jason Voorhees shoulda been so lucky.
So statistically speaking, that bodes well for Evil Dead Burn. And sure enough, this brand-new entry in the franchise delivers a walloping, blood-soaked, full-throttle rollercoaster ride of a great time.
After an opening that provides direct ties to 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, Evil Dead Burn begins with restaurateur Will (George Pullar) and his co-operator/wife, French émigré Alice (Souheila Yacoub) getting into a particularly nasty argument. The fight ends with Will drunkenly jumping into his car. Soon, he meets an untimely, fiery death…thanks partially to an encounter with a Deadite.
Will, as it turns out, was an abusive piece of shit, which fills Alice with conflicting emotions during her husband’s funeral. There, she’s forced to interact with Will’s family, including enabling mother-in-law Susan (Tandi Wright), brooding and hostile father-in-law Edgar (Errol Shand), and Will’s benign but spineless kid brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan).
The familial tension’s thick enough to cut with a knife, which only exacerbates things when the family ends up trapped in their old house together. Connections between the family and the Necronomicon emerge. And before long, the curse of the Deadites begins adding literal rot to the metaphoric familial disintegration on display.
Evil Dead Burn manages to touch on some weighty topics before and during the scary bits. The corrosive effects of family dysfunction drive as much of the horror as any supernatural force. Alice, in the meantime, faces the mixed emotions stirred up with the passing of an abusive spouse, as well as the antipathy of a family that sees her as an outsider and traitor when she balks at continuing to run the family restaurant. Squint, and you’ll see a definite correlation between this popcorn horror movie and deeper issues plaguing the world we live in.
It helps that the cast uniformly give it their all, doing a lot of the heavy lifting characterization-wise. Yacoub manages to be likable and relatable, without sanding off Alice’s chain-smoking, sometimes prickly rough edges. Shand and Wright, two great New Zealand character actors in this New Zealand-shot movie, have already delivered solid work in two of my favorite genre films of the last five years (Mārama and Pearl, respectively). They both knock it out of the park here (Shand in particular makes for a mesmerizing, nigh-iconic heavy).
But director Sébastien Vaniček isn’t focusing on nuanced human dynamics here; the functional script by Vaniček and Florent Bernard exists to provide the springboard for the gory/gloppy/scary stuff. And that’s where Evil Dead Burn really kicks serious ass.
As he proved in his 2023 shocker Infested, Vaniček knows how to engineer a genre movie. Once shit goes down, the pace—and the gore—shift into harrowing, exhilarating high gear. There’s a masterful sequence set in the confines of a crashed car that deserves a place in the highlights reel of 2026 horror; and the abundance of gore gags and setpieces sent the packed house at the preview screening into joyous hysterics (you’ll never look at an open dishwasher the same way again after seeing this).
Evil Dead Burn also balances the horror and humor that’s always been a franchise staple with a sensibility all its own. One climactic lapse into CGI fuckery aside, the mostly-practical gore scenes land with French-extreme precision, and Vaniček injects his own brand of merciless gallic wit to the gallows giggles.
Evil Dead Burn may not be as gleefully silly as the original Evil Dead trilogy, nor as emotionally resonant as the (surprisingly character-rich) Evil Dead Rise. But it delivers so much bang for your horror movie buck, you’re highly unlikely to care. Burn baby burn, indeed.
Evil Dead Burn opens Friday July 10 in theaters everywhere. Image courtesy New Line Cinema/Screen Gems/Ghost House Films.