Evil Dead Burn (2026) is directed by Sebastien Vanicek, who wrote the film alongside Florent Bernard. It stars Souheila Yacoub, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Erroll Shand, Tandi Wright, Maude Davey, Greta van den Brink, George Pullar, Keanu Karim, Tapiwa Soropa, Victory Ndukwe, and Alain Chabat. This 6th installment in the popular horror franchise follows Alice (Yacoub), a recently widowed woman who’s roped into spending time with her dysfunctional in-laws. When the deadites arrive from the forest seeking a powerful artifact once owned by the family’s great-grandfather, simple tension explodes into a bloody, full-fledged fight to survive. This forces everyone to set their squabbles aside and work together, but not everyone in the family is so forgiving.

In classic Evil Dead fashion, characters are eventually possessed by the demonic deadites, which gives the cast ample opportunity to go wild with their performances and deliver something memorable. Despite none of the performances falling flat, they often feel like business as usual for the franchise. The exception, however, is Erroll Shand as the stern family patriarch. He may not play the zaniest demon-possessed character in the franchise, but he certainly has an argument for being the most terrifying. He gets some of the film’s best/scariest moments, and only suffers from the fact that he looks identical to an infected from the 28 Days Later franchise.

This uninspired design for the deadites is likewise the case for the setting, which is yet again another worn-down house. I’d hoped we’d left this generic setting (not just for the franchise, but the entire genre) behind with the high-rise apartment-set Evil Dead Rise (2023), but it looks like the Necronomicon is staying in the forest for now. Thankfully, this lack of an inspired design is easy to ignore when everything else around it is so intense and exciting. 

This is a wild ride from beginning to end, and although it never becomes a particularly bad movie, it slowly loses steam about halfway through. To be clear, the mayhem never subsides; the second half is just a bit formulaic for the franchise. Any questions about who’ll live and die are answered far too early, stripping a lot of would-be tension from the film’s back half. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to watch our hero character kick some ass knowing full well they’re going to come out on top, but not for the entire third act. The film’s almost 2-hour runtime flies by, but the pacing has a few issues. The fantastic plot points established in the first act are either resolved by the end of the second act or appear only briefly in the third act. This successfully strengthens the middle of the movie, but doesn’t save enough cards to deliver something special later on.  

This definitely lands on the darker side of the franchise, arguably being the meanest and goriest installment so far. Those who can’t stand a little bit of carnage candy should steer clear; this is maybe the goriest new movie I’ve seen since Saw X (2023). Though there are a handful of memorable laughs from Maude Davey’s dementia-laden grandmother character, diehard fans of the zanier originals (especially fans of 1992’s Army of Darkness) will no doubt be disappointed. 

That said, this is arguably the scariest entry in the franchise, especially the first half. It becomes too formulaic as it rolls along, but never becomes a slog to get through. It’s clear that the director is somewhat creatively boxed in by franchise expectations (which is weird, considering the IP includes Army of Darkness), so it excites me to see what he can do with more original material. B