Evil Dead Burn is the 2026 horror film directed by Sébastien Vaniček, the French filmmaker behind Infested, whom Sam Raimi personally recruited into the franchise. It is the sixth Evil Dead film and a direct sequel to 2023's Evil Dead Rise, produced by Raimi and Rob Tapert, and released by Warner Bros. It stars Souheila Yacoub as Alice, a grieving woman who travels to stay with her late husband's family, alongside Hunter Doohan and Luciane Buchanan. Reportedly trimmed down from an NC-17 to an R, it delivers exactly the gory, chaotic Evil Dead experience you would hope for, and I had a good time with it, even if it landed as a solid middle-of-the-road entry for me rather than a great one.

Before I get into it, I have to address a personal matter, which is that this film is apparently why Rose is no longer front and centre in my Night Agent show. Luciane Buchanan, who plays Rose Larkin in The Night Agent, turns up here as Thya, and watching her make the leap from prestige political thriller to sucking on an old lady's dentures in a Deadite movie is a career pivot I can only respect.

For context, Evil Dead Rise remains my favourite film in this entire franchise, and Alyssa Sutherland's performance as the possessed mother was the standout of that whole movie. I mention this now because she becomes extremely relevant later. Burn itself follows a familiar and reliable template: grief brings a family together, the Necronomicon resurfaces, and a mournful gathering curdles into a reunion from hell as the relatives transform into Deadites one after another.

On the craft side, it is a real mixed bag, and I want to be fair to both halves. The film leans on a number of showy drone shots that announce themselves loudly as drone shots, and yet none of them ever build to anything striking enough to justify the flex. They set up an anticipation the film repeatedly fails to cash in. Where Vaniček genuinely impresses, though, is in the tighter, nastier camerawork once the house descends into chaos. There is a standout moment where the violence erupts, a character is slammed into a mirror, and the film reveals we have been watching the entire time from inside the reflection. It is a clever, disorienting trick that pulled a genuine, out-loud reaction from me.

On the gore, I was surprised to find there was less body horror than I had braced for, but what is here is effective and satisfyingly grim. The clear highlight is a tense, beautifully staged car sequence involving Buchanan's Thya that sent my anxiety soaring. The effort and craft in that scene are obvious, and it is the moment where the film feels most fully alive.