A wonky work of fire and blood, the spin-off/sequel “Evil Dead Burn” hints at a delicious mean streak that never fully coheres. The series, which began with Sam Raimi’s inventive, shoestring horror-comedies in the 1980s, is on something of a soft relaunch kick between the recent “Evil Dead Rise” and the forthcoming “Evil Dead Wrath,” seeming standalone films with loose plot connections, but a thus-far overarching theme: The menace of familial bonds.
In that vein, “Burn” purports to feature a family reunion from hell, with all the familiar gore and machinery of Deadite entries past. But despite counter-balancing its bleakness, the movie’s schadenfreude languishes in an awkward purgatory between irreverence and all-out fun. It relegates the latter to the margins and to off-screen moments, while filling the air with dead silence where the occasional sardonic quip ought to be (Not a single “Honey, I’m home!” from its zombies in nuclear family clothing? Come on..) It’s not a bad film by any stretch, but like its predecessor “Rise,” it’s missing its teeth.
Much like Lee Cronin’s “Rise,” Sébastien Vaniček’s “Burn” peaks during a ruthless, pier-set prologue before switching gears. This vicious cold open has enough nominal connections to the main story to engender intrigue, which, in this case takes, the form of a targeted haunting — the Deadites seem to have a mission this time around — rather than characters stumbling onto an ancient curse.
When French immigrant photographer Alice (Souheila Yacoub) loses her short-tempered American husband Will (George Pullar) in a fiery car crash, she accompanies her grieving brother-in-law Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and his girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan) to a family funeral where she isn’t welcome. Will’s father Edgar (Erroll Shand) is brusque and to-the-point, while his mother Susan (Tandi Wright) offers a more sarcastic cold shoulder while caring for Will’s dementia-addled grandma Polly (Maude Davey).
Before long, the story shifts to its primary setting: the rundown, isolated house owned by Will’s late grandfather, where Will and Alice once tied the knot. Like their marriage, this dilapidated family home has reached a point of rot and disrepair, making it the ideal, spooky setting.
Bit by bit, a Deadite “infection” makes its way through the family like piercing grief. This forces deep-seated tensions to the surface, albeit just enough for a resentful outburst here or there before things devolve into bloodshed. The impish, murderous spirits want something hidden away by Will’s grandfather — blah blah blah; this lore-drop was a lot more fun in “Final Destination: Bloodlines” — and in order to find it, they possess one character after another and adopt their memories too, forcing the likes of Joseph and Alice to confront unspoken family secrets.
It’s a pretty ingenious premise, but like Cronin’s predecessor, it never goes full-tilt with its use of happy, heteronormative façades twisted beyond recognition. Where “Rise” featured a possessed mother imposing herself on her queer children, its spirits’ mischievous embodiment of a more traditional family unit was never ugly enough to yield vital catharsis (which is to say: its Deadites should have been way more homophobic!).
“Burn” nearly fixes this problem, with its focus on an abused wife entering her late husband’s unhappy home, before being confronted with hints of the emotional physical violence that birthed him. However, when the supernatural gore takes hold, these ideas float to the surface only in spurts.
The story eventually becomes one of a woman retrieving her autonomy from the specter of an abusive spouse — not unlike Leigh Whannell’s remake of “The Invisible Man” — but this somber saga never fully gels with the mayhem at hand. Which isn’t to say it can’t; Vaniček comes within inches of marrying his visual flair to this genuinely meaningful subtext. However, the result of his gonzo visual experiment (involving lengthy, chaotic takes shot at a distance) is a camera that flails so wildly that it misses the most disquieting, squelching elements right beneath its nose.
(To say nothing of the racial subtext the film introduces and ignores, by having a white family treat two nonwhite daughters-in-law with suspicion.)
The screen is filled with wild ideas that take the series in a new direction. But in practice, “Burn” also treats desire, blood and violence as mere prescriptive artifacts to be assembled in visually pleasing ways — rather than in ways that might make them viscerally repulsive, let alone useful to Vaniček’s underlying themes.
There’s fun to be had, sure, but rare are the moments when the movie truly sings by synthesizing its spare parts. When the most grisly elements involve invulnerable Deadites self-mutilating for a laugh, and the editing obscures the more effective, human-aimed brutality, there’s only so wince-inducing the images can be.
By the end, “Evil Dead Burn” works in theory, as the story of a woman confronting her physical and emotional scars. But it never achieves the queasy euphoria of its predecessors — both Raimi’s originals, and Fede Álvarez’s blood-soaked 2013 remake — as a film combining gruesome meanness with tongue-in-cheek cinematic delights. There’s clearly something there, but it isn’t enough.
Image credit: “Evil Dead Burn”
This guest post is written by the best in the business, world class film critic Siddhant Adlakha.
