There is a scene I love in the 1968 film The Odd Couple where Felix Unger, brilliantly played by Jack Lemmon, is sitting down to eat his dinner and his roommate Oscar Madison, equally brilliantly played by Walter Matthau, comes in and tells him to move because he needs the table for his weekly poker game.
Oscar says, “Now kindly remove that spaghetti from my poker table,” to which Felix laughs at him.
When Oscar asks, “ What the hell’s so funny?”
Felix pompously retorts, “It’s not spaghetti, it’s linguine.”
Without missing a beat, Oscar grabs the plate of linguini off the table and chucks it across the room where it smashes against the far wall, saying, “Now it’s garbage.”
This is my analogy for the new Evil Dead Burn.
I feel like everyone involved in writing, producing and directing this installment of the Evil Dead franchise are laughing, trying to convince me that this movie should be a part of the legacy Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell started almost a half a century ago, saying, “You fool, it’s Evil Dead ” and I want to throw it against the wall and say “ Now, it’s Garbage.”
I adored 2013’s Evil Dead that Fede Alvarez created. It was an incredible reimagining of the original masterpiece. It was fresh and brought innovative ideas to already established tropes.
Surprisingly, I really liked Evil Dead Rise even though I loathe Lee Cronin and most everything he touches. Evil Dead Rise strayed a little further off the overgrown path in the woods to the cursed cabin; however, I really enjoyed the idea of Evil Dead in an urban setting, and giving it the Poltergeist III treatment wasn’t the trainwreck it could have been. I thought that a lot of the credit goes to the actors who really sold the whole experience.
This brings us to Evil Dead Burn. I am really trying to stay as positive as possible, though I may have to resort to snarky cynicism in order to write this.
Evil Dead Burn is all over the place. Thematically, story, acting, tone, and direction, which there seemed to be very little of. The very few pieces and chunks of this film that I enjoyed are far overshadowed by the fact that I really do not see the point of this movie.
Sure, it’s got possessions and is gruesome plenty. It has buckets and buckets of gore. You want jump scares? They’ve got twenty! But who cares? No big deal. I want more.
Sorry… Was possessed by Ariel there for a hot minute.
Evil Dead Burn might as well be a Hostel, Saw, or Terrifier film. And I don’t think what little crumb of a link to the Evil Dead universe that the filmmakers give us is enough. Ironic, seeing as the previous film had even less of a connecting thread.
So my question is this. How far away can you take a thing you are supposed to be emulating before that thing ceases to be that thing?
I feel like the new talent that has been tapped to produce these new Evil Dead films is quickly telephoning themselves away from the source material and into their own new franchise that is no longer even going to be recognizable as an Evil Dead film.
If you don’t know what the game Telephone is, go and ask your parents or grandparents.
Speaking of antiquated technology, Evil Dead Burn telegraphed every upcoming “shocking” moment so hard that Alexander Graham Bell came back from the dead and was like “Chill the f*ck out, Guys”
Anyway, this franchise will need a legacy character to really tie the whole franchise together, like The Dude’s rug, or to actually return to what made the original three films so great. If you don’t know what that is, then I rest my case. I will give Evil Dead Burn credit in that it gives us a cool “fake Shemp” in the most righteous way, but is it enough? Clearly, this critic is skeptical.
On a more spoilery note:
Almost none of the main characters have a single redeeming quality except the “final girl”. She is the only one who is even remotely likable and that I gave a shit about. This film really leans into the shittiness of toxic masculinity and uses it as a propelling catalyst for the women to be powerful and take action. But by hamstringing them with victimhood in order to become capable and heroic instead of just letting them be powerful in their own right you diminish their power in a way.
If you have to repeatedly hit someone in order to “make them stronger” then a) fuck you and b) you’re doing it wrong. At one point the filmmakers use the grief of losing a family member, an abusive asshole, to justify their awful treatment to his wife while she struggles with the pain of hiding the fact that he was abusive and violent towards her.
All this, I guess, so that when she does what she does in the end we cheer for her more?
One thing I truly love about these new incarnations of the Evil Dead Films is how woman centric and female positive they are in their story telling. They all revolve around women rising to meet the evil that has ravaged their lives. They do not have to rely on the men around them to save them, in fact most of the dudes are pretty much useless or bad for the most part in these films. And I love that.
Evil Dead Burn however feels like it needed a little more nuance, maybe another re-write to blend the Evil Dead franchise with story they wanted to tell about how death can mess up family and relationships. That there is an inherent evil that lies just below the surface in some relationships and will rear its ugly head at the tiniest of provocations.
I WILL say that the audience I saw this film with was bonkers crazy for Evil Dead Burn. The audience was yelling at the screen and laughing inappropriately at parts. I was genuinely confused by their random chortling throughout the screening. They did cheer at all the appropriate parts and made sickly noises when gratuitous blood and carnage ensued.
So I guess the movie found its audience.
That audience just happens to not be me. I dunno. Like all movies, I will give it a second viewing at a later date because if one thing is certain, my second viewing of any film can radically change my opinion of it.
For now, though, at the writing of this review, I will say that Evil Dead Burn comes across as if a person who never saw any of the Evil Dead movies heard a description of what those films are about, then tried to explain them to someone who doesn’t speak their language, and THAT person went and made an Evil Dead film. Some parts were solid and on the mark, some sections made less than rational sense, and there were straight-up WTF moments of bewilderment.
Uneven is the best I can say about Evil Dead Burn. Please go and see for yourself. I may be totally off my head.
* * * * *
Produced by Rob Tapert, Sam Raimi
Written by Sébastien Vaniček, Florent Bernard
Based on The Evil Dead by Sam Raimi
Directed by Sébastien Vaniček
Starring Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan,
Luciane Buchanan, Erroll Shand, Maude Davey
