Not all of that comes from the invading, marauding undead (“flesh-consuming demons”). In fact, most of it is the festering mark left on a family, but decades of deadites and their enemies (we now have a name, of sorts), a rot spreading well before the gore drops.

Evil Dead Rise updated the series to a workable anthology (it grated faces so this could stick fountain pens in ears). It found a space just a little friendlier than the 2013 reimagining of the first (and second) film. Despite picking up, interestingly from EDR, EDB is way more po-faced. It’s a sunken, drab tone with only the remotest comedy coming, unfairly, from a person living with dementia. 

EDB sees the chance to widen the mythology, or bed it in. It’s not that much of a change though—the usual schtick is true that this particular brand of demon can be woken by five words uttered from the Necronomicon Ex Mortis. But the mourning, highly dysfunctional family that’s hacked up here is haunted by their grandfather (dead, but a sneaky cameo for Brice Campbell), a professor who travelled the world for a MacGuffin to defeat the Kandarian Demon—the rather familiar Kandarian Dagger. In the franchise since the beginning, this time round it’s a stubbier blade and not just a weapon to defeat the possessed; it’s a magnet that draws the undead to destroy it. The lack of a need to utter the five words becomes a bit of a distraction then; this time the deadites have revenge on their mind—leading from a rather gloomy, Hellraiser-tinged lakeside opening that leads on from EDR.

As a result, EDR is the most slasher-like of the series, reflected in the notable nods to John Carpenter’s Halloween.

The Evil Dead Burn Summary

After a fight at the club he owns, Will speeds away from his wife Alice only to crash into a deadite (Jessica, last seen lurking around a lake at the start of EDR). This time, Jessica has been summoned by an existential crisis. Will’s brother Joseph, an aspiring writer, has uncovered the life’s work of his grandfather, including the fabled demon-destroying Kandarian Dagger, in his old dilapidated house—the very house the small and horribly dysfunctional family retreats to after Will’s funeral. It’s there that the deadites begin their campaign to destroy the family and the dagger for good. 

Twisting the Dead

For its lack of humour and stretching of the deadite motivation, EDB is still riddled with the absurdity of the idea. It’s hard not to raise a smile as much as a grimace at the ludicrous and oh-so-familiar horror creations doing their grizzly worst. The usual incantation may not kick things off, but there’s the swoshing, eye-gouging and implacable blanched-iris stare. 

As soon as things get going, they get gruesome—and that’s after a grey opening features wire-cut faces, exposed spinal cords and, in a delicious touch you have to lay at the, well, feet of director Sébastien Vaniček, the hand and tissue sliding of a hand in the rain when stepped on. For the rest of the film it’s not so much eyes but teeth and ears that get the Evil Dead treatment with some sequences that are likely to make you wince. A kitchen takes a starring role (with a strong double-meaning, but more of that later) as in EDR, but it’s a moment with a denture bridge that springs vividly to mind. 

Vaniček and Souheila Yacoub, here playing French as lead Alice, add a certain Gallic sensibility that is a refreshing addition to the glorified cabin-in-the-woods proceedings. A stand-out scene (which was a little spoilt in the teaser but fair play, it is astoundingly good) sees Yacoub crawl through the downstairs of the house while deadite hell is unleashed around her.

Otherwise, deadite etiquette takes a battering; the logic of some actions and the passing on of the demonic spawn doesn’t always hold up, but that’s been waning for a while if it’s ever been there, and it’s really not the point of EDB.

The central nub is that the Deadite menace is a metaphor for the simmering resentment and horror running through a pretty unlikeable family. The hint is that the grandfather (reviled) caused this through his obsession with the Circle of the Wise Men (the last guard against the deadites—see they have a name). But EDB also lets the ‘infection manifest in a way that reflects the character flaws of the living—the father with self-destructive impulses, the son twisted and manipulative. An interesting part is the ticking countdown to the deceased Will arriving at the family reunion—this film’s not quite-as-effective and could-have-been-stronger “dead by dawn.”

When he does arrive, it’s very clearly the exploration of an abusive relationship it promises to be in its opening scenes. Remember those kitchen moments? We see the living find the danger in them as much as the deadites.

There are chainsaws—wryly ignored in favour of pilers and circular saws—and some imaginative swooshing camerawork to keep us in the Evil Dead space—not least a little reference to the unheeded warnings passed on to a group in 1983. But for all its slick work and bloody dedication, amid a pretty dreary setting, you can’t help missing a bit more of that dose of the 1980s come the inevitable mid-credit trail for the next one. Still, we have to let go of Ash someday. Evil Dead Wrath is coming in 2028.