Evil Dead Burn (2026)
Quite the burn, especially if you paid to see it.
There’s a way to film someone getting impaled on fondue forks that is scary.
There’s a way to film someone getting impaled on fondue forks that is funny.
And there’s a way to film someone getting impaled on fondue forks that just makes people look at their watches.
If you go see Evil Dead Burn, you’ll be checking the time a lot.
But I’m glad I went, it was great for perspective. For a while there, it looked like every horror movie that came out in 2026 was actually going to be worth watching.
After Backrooms, Hokum, Leviticus and Obsession, it’s good to have a reminder that not all horror movies are great experiences. Some are just cheesy, predictable, cash-in sequels to classic IPs.
I am being a little mean. There are some good parts to Evil Dead Burn and if you compared it to the average sequel of many horror movie franchises1, it might not seem like a bad movie at all.
But unfortunately EDB must be compared to previous Evil Dead films, particularly those directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell. Those comparisons make Evil Dead Burn seem dull, repetitive, way too serious and way too long.
The Plot: At a posh restaurant/nightclub, a birthday celebration is underway for Joseph (Hunter Doohan), an unambitious guy who started writing five novels but never finished any.
We learn this because William (George Pullar), Joseph’s intoxicated older brother, makes it part of a belligerent “happy birthday” speech. Joseph’s wife, Thya (Luciane Buchanan) tells William to be less of a bully, which makes him angry. William’s wife, Alice (Souheila Yacoub) tells him to calm down and that makes him go ballistic. Joseph and Thya successfully prevent William from attacking Alice, but can’t stop him from driving away in a drunken rage.
William runs down a pedestrian (Alyssa Sutherland), who turns out to be one of the Deadites from the last Evil Dead movie. Her severed head speaks incantations that cause William to fatally crash and become one of the Kandarian undead.
At William’s funeral we meet his grandmother, Polley (Maude Davey), who has advanced dementia and William’s father, Edgar (Eroll Shand) who glowers with angry-old-man rage that J.K. Simmons might envy.
We also meet William’s mother, Susan (Tandi Wright) who has already decided Alice will spend the rest of her life as a replacement for William, working in the family business. Alice has other plans, notably moving far away and forgetting all about her abusive dead husband and his dysfunctional relatives.
The situation is tense and a confrontation feels immanent, but it doesn’t happen because the Deadites attack. The remaining 90-or-so minutes of this movie are just Deadites killing people and talking like Tickle Me Elmo.
To be fair, that is what most people go to an Evil Dead movie to see, but shouldn’t it be done well? Shouldn’t it be funny and scary or at least one of the two?
Earlier this year I watched Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, a very similar movie, but one that took the time to establish characters, create suspense and use gore effectively. LCTM had the audience screaming and laughing all the way through. There was almost no audience reaction during Evil Dead Burn2.
For those of you who are going to see it anyway, The film does have some moments:
There is some very funny dark humor in the funeral home scenes, particularly the one where an undertaker (Shyamal Singh), tries to use a blazing cremation oven as background for an amateur hip hop video.
There’s some very creepy gore used in scenes involving a car seat and a car door.
The acting is quite good and Souheila Yacoub is really impressive as the lead. She’s never at Bruce Campbell’s level, but there are times she gets close, notably the scene with the fountain pen. Evil Dead Burn does hint at greater continuity in the Deadite universe. It would be great to see Yacoub in another Evil Dead movie.
But overall, Evil Dead Burn is pretty dull experience, especially when compared to any other horror movie currently in theatres.
Lee Cronin and Bruce Campbell were both Executive Producers. I can’t blame them. Being paid lots of money to have no responsibilities other than not publicly criticizing a movie is a pretty sweet gig.
But Sam Raimi was the Producer, that means he was actually involved with this movie’s production. What do you suppose his motivation was? Was it to make his own Evil Dead films look better? Was it part of a larger conspiracy to fill multiplexes with movies so mediocre that everyone has no choice but to go see The Odyssey?
My mind goes to strange places when I’m bored.
Amityville, Children of the Corn, Hellraiser, The Howling, The Leprechaun, Tremors, there’s more.
There was one one weirdo who made a point of laughing robotically during all of the kill scenes. Not sure what his point was.