What’s it about?

After the death of her husband, Alice (Souheila Yacoub) reluctantly spends some time with her in-laws at their spooky country house. Her grieving process is interrupted by demonic forces with a nasty agenda.

What’d we think?

Following the success of 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, director (and co-writer) Sébastien Vaniček has produced a solid sequel that’s got plenty to like (if you’re into that sort of thing) but maybe just not as much as its predecessor. We learn pretty early on that the new cast of characters have the misfortune of being descended from the original “guy who researched the Necronomicon and made the spooky recordings”, which would serve as a neat little handwave to get the ball rolling if it didn’t then take so long to get to the good stuff. Our freshly-widowed heroine Alice has to sit through an awkward funeral and some uncomfortable interactions with her awful in-laws before things finally start getting interesting/disgusting.

I’m not a fan of horror in general, but I quite liked that there were some elements from the original Evil Dead at play – creative practical effects, a mean-but-silly sense of humour, and always leaning more towards yucky than scary. My companions (noted horror girlies) had far less fun than I did, noting there was too much focus on the story for how thin it was, as well as finding all the characters wholly unlikeable (which I always thought was kind of the point in these movies).

I had a lot of fun with Evil Dead Burn, despite not being the target audience. The script would have benefitted from another pass, but there were enough rough chuckles and fun setpieces to leave me pretty satisfied.