Ridiculously Vicious but Not Funny: An Evil Dead Burn Review

By C. Rommial Butler

Even in the frantic and unapologetically brutal world of the evil dead, Evil Dead Burn suffers from a pacing problem.

It’s by no means slow—it bludgeons the audience nonstop with violence and gore from the opening scenes—but it’s so intent on shocking that it desensitizes in short order, failing to establish the push and pull that builds tension.

Disgusting? Yes, indeed! This film is viscerally repulsive in its depictions of the Deadites’ sadism but even that is piled on to the point that two thirds of the way through the movie I found myself rolling my eyes, thinking that even demons wouldn’t put themselves through so much trouble.

The rules for how the Deadites manifest have always been ambiguous, but this film takes liberties with the lore to seed the chaos with incessant plot devices, since it’s so confused about where it really wants to take the story that it has to force its way.

The characters become Deadites at the exact moment when it’s most inconvenient for them to do so, every single time, to the point that each occurrence is telegraphed.

I enjoyed this film in the theater for all the same reasons I enjoyed seeing even the worst of the 80s slasher sequels, because of the reactions from the crowd to the gruesome kills.

We all gasped, but no one screamed. We winced and covered our eyes, but we laughed and shook our heads.

It was also shot very creatively. I enjoyed some of the tricks they did with the cinematography and the dark atmosphere, but at the same time there were some suspect choices as far as the digital effects.

One Deadite, for instance, was a burn victim, but though he was literally burnt to a crisp, missing large chunks of his body, and had been the walking dead for days, he nevertheless spouted huge amounts of blood when stabbed—digital blood that made me think more of Mortal Kombat than Evil Dead.

They were going for mean and terrifying here, and though it was mean in the sense that they would not spare the audience any creepy discomfort (especially regarding the dysfunctional and very unlikable family) or graphic depiction of dismemberment, the digital discrepancies and manic pacing made it fall short of terrifying, more often than not jarring us out of the necessary suspension of disbelief.

Matching the comic stylings of Bruce Campbell with practical effects will win me over anytime, even when its not scary (think Bubba Ho-Tep), but inundating me with CGI Deadites who seem a little too polished and cartoon-like to be taken seriously, despite the fact they’re doing some serious damage, just didn’t really impress or even agitate.

So this one’s a mixed bag. On the one hand I can appreciate the extra effort put in to make me wince and cringe, but I feel like it came at the expense of making me think and feel.

The best part of the film turned out to be Grandma, and as I don’t want to spoil this redeeming factor, I’ll leave it at that.

I wouldn’t rate this one as high as I’m seeing others rate it in the Evil Dead canon, at least on this opening weekend. I liked Rise better.

But if you’re a fan, it’s worth it just to compare and contrast, much as you might one time have sat in the theater watching unseasoned actors stink up a low budget romp just because you wanted to see how creative Jason Voorhees or Micheal Myers would get.