[HorrorScience] Evil Dead Burn turns a family reunion into the bloodiest nightmare of the saga

Reading time: 7 minutes

Release date

08/07/2026

Address

Sébastien Vanicek

Script

Sébastien Vanicek, Florent Bernard

Distribution

Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Erroll Shand, Maude Davey, George Pullar

Table of Contents

A catch that no fan of the saga will take lightly
A funeral that ends up being just the beginning
A family dinner that turns into a massacre
A delivery that bets everything on excess, with a script that remains in the background
Evil Dead Burn curiosities

the sagaEvil DeadFor more than forty years he has been proving that there is always one more twist to the same idea: a group of people, an isolated cabin, a book that should never have been opened. Evil Dead Burn, the sixth installment of the franchise and the first directed by the Frenchman Sébastien Vaniček (responsible for Vermines/Infested), takes that already classic formula and transfers it to the even more uncomfortable terrain of a dysfunctional family forced to live together in full mourning, with Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert again as producers and Bruce Campbell and Lee Cronin as executive producers.

A catch that no fan of the saga will take lightly

The film starts with a scene that anyone who has seen Evil Dead Rise will immediately recognize: two friends calmly fishing in a lake, something that works as a direct wink and at the same time as a warning that nothing good is to come. This introduction serves to introduce Jessica, a Deadite who has already been carrying possession since some point prior to the central events of the plot, and who after finishing off the fishermen crosses the path of Will Price, a man who argues violently with his wife Alice and ends up driving drunk, crashing into her. As Will burns alive inside the car, Jessica recites a passage from the Necronomicon and transfers the demonic possession directly into his body, sealing his fate before he even fully dies.

A funeral that ends up being just the beginning

Some time later, the Price family gathers to say goodbye to Will: his widow Alice, his brother Joseph, his girlfriend Thya, his parents Susan and Edgar, and grandmother Polly. From the beginning of this meeting it is very clear that there are family wounds that have not been healed for a long time: Susan and Edgar openly blame Alice for the accident that killed their son, and she feels increasingly isolated within a group that never fully accepted her. Before Will's body is cremated, Edgar decides to visit him alone, and that farewell gesture becomes the first big break of the film: Will's possessed corpse breaks the coffin, burns his own father and ends the life of the crematorium manager.

Back at the family's lake house, as Edgar slowly begins to succumb to his own possession, Joseph takes refuge in the attic investigating the notes left by his grandfather Benjamin, a man who Susan claims "was not a good person" and who, her recordings reveal, was part of the Circle of the Wise: the same group that originally read the Necronomicon passages that sparked the events ofthe first film in the saga, back in 1981. Among those papers, Joseph finds the Kandarian Dagger, a weapon that, according to his grandfather's research, would be capable of destroying the Deadites definitively, an object that any fan of the franchise will immediately recognize as a direct nod toEvil Dead II.

A family dinner that turns into a massacre

Tension explodes during a dinner that starts off like any awkward gathering between relatives who can't quite stand each other, and ends with Edgar stabbing the family dog, Max, before completely collapsing. Joseph and Thya try to rush him to the hospital, but along the way Edgar, now completely possessed, mutilates Thya's hands and murders her, causing a crash from which Joseph barely escapes with his life. Back at the house, Alice stumbles upon all of Benjamin's research on the Necronomicon, and in a moment of tension that perfectly mixes terror with the black humor so characteristic of the saga, she begins to read aloud one of the book's passages before stopping herself just in time. What follows is a constant escalation: a possessed Max attacks her, forcing her to defend herself, and soon after Thya reappears as a Deadite, first locked in the basement of the house before manipulating Grandma Polly to get her to let her out. From there, the entire family is trapped in a fight to survive within their own house, with less and less chance of anyone coming out unscathed, and we prefer to leave that final stretch untold for those who have not yet seen it.

A delivery that bets everything on excess, with a script that remains in the background

What I highlight most about Evil Dead Burn is Vaniček's staging: there are truly virtuoso camera angles and movements, and a display of gore and violence that does not avoid any of the excesses that one expects from this saga, with moments that make you wonder out loud "How did they do this scene?" more than once. It is true that the script is not the most inspired of the franchise, relying heavily on the already known formula of a group of people defending themselves as best they can inside an isolated house in the middle of nowhere, and that in comparison with Raimi's original films this new batch of installments feels more industrial and calculated, less artisanal and shameless. But within those limits, Evil Dead Burn delivers exactly what it promises: it is probably the most intense and bloody installment of the entire saga to date, and the broken family bond that runs through the entire plot gives extra emotional weight to a formula that, forty years later, still finds ways to surprise.

Evil Dead Burn curiosities

The fishing scene that opens the film is a direct nod to Evil Dead Rise (2023), designed specifically so that fans of that installment recognize it immediately.
The Kandarian Dagger that Joseph finds among his grandfather's belongings is a direct reference to the weapon originally introduced in Evil Dead II.
Benjamin Price's diaries reveal that he belonged to the Circle of the Wise and that he was an associate of Professor Raymond Knowby, the archaeologist who unearthed the Necronomicon in the ruins of Kandar Castle in the first film of the saga, in 1981.
Among Benjamin's papers there even appears a newspaper clipping that refers to the cabin fire from the 2013 film Evil Dead, thus connecting different points of the franchise's mythology.
The tape recorder used by Benjamin on his records is a Panasonic Solid State RQ-706S, the same model that appears in the original Evil Dead and its sequel.
Principal photography took place entirely in New Zealand, between July and October 2025, with Philip Lozano as director of photography.
The soundtrack was provided by the French duo Double Danger, who had previously worked with Vaniček on his filmVermines(known internationally as Infested).
The film includes two post-credits scenes that hint at where the saga's current timeline could go, while the next confirmed installment, Evil Dead Wrath, will be a prequel set in 1972 directed by Francis Galluppi.