Entertainment
The Evil Dead Franchise Is Horror’s Greatest Winning Streak, and It’s Not Even Close
Horror’s most enduring franchises tend to have one common trait: They vary wildly in quality from entry to entry. Nightmare on Elm Street fans get treated to sequels like A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, but then also have to wade through Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. Halloween fans get Halloween and … arguably, any of the sequels. Hellraiser gave us both Hellbound: Hellraiser II and Hellraiser: Hellworld. It’s tough to think of any series that doesn’t suffer these kinds of dips…except for one.
For more than 40 years and five films, Sam Raimi’s breakneck Evil Dead series hasn’t produced a single dud. It’s a laudable accomplishment for a series that includes everything from a straight remake to multiple ventures into comedic territory.
In 1981, audiences were shaken by the scrappy, malevolent energy of The Evil Dead, and its 2013 remake somehow managed to capture some of its blood-soaked, downright mean lightning in a bottle. Even 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, flaws and all, didn’t betray the series’ ruthless roots, with its bloody set pieces and fearless attitude toward kids and violence. On Friday, the sixth entry (and third of the modern era), Evil Dead Burn will hit theaters — and there’s good reason to believe the franchise will continue its winning streak.
Why Horror’s Wildest Franchise Is Also Its Most Consistent
Sam Raimi and his friends put 1981’s The Evil Dead together with little more than about $90,000 and incredible determination; the story of the film’s hellish production is legendary. However, once Stephen King saw the finished product and hailed it as visionary, studios took notice and the relentless horror film was on screens across the country, X-rating and all. American audiences — even those familiar with the nascent slasher film template or, say, The Exorcist — weren’t prepared for the sheer level of mayhem Raimi was able to spray across the screen. At that point, the only comparison for The Evil Dead‘s hallucinatory splatter were some of the more ferocious Italian genre films by masters like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci.
The success of the first film made a sequel inevitable — even though it took some six years and concessions to producer Dino De Laurentiis for it to arrive. It did take the series in a more overtly comedic direction (the sequel resembles one of Peter Jackson‘s early “splatstick” comedies more than hallucinatory Italian horror), but that wasn’t a problem — Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn upped the ante in terms of pure wildness and creativity, and was critically praised for it. Even Roger Ebert, who famously loathed many 1980s horror classics, confessed that the film was a blast.
And by the time Army of Darkness arrived in 1991, the series’ transition to comedy-horror was in full bloom, with Bruce Campbell‘s Ash cementing himself as an action hero and Raimi diving into his goofiest set pieces yet, all set in Medieval England. Still, with Raimi and longtime cinematographer Bill Pope behind the camera, the bloody energy and fun never lagged, and Army of Darkness remains a genre classic to this day.
Even the Modern ‘Evil Dead’ Films Have Kept Up the Bloody Standards
Fede Álvarez‘s 2013 reimagining of the original film shouldn’t have worked. Given horror trends of the time and the era’s string of disastrous remakes, the odds were against it. But the first-time writer-director pulled off a bloody, relentless good time with aplomb. Much like the original, 2013’a Evil Dead initially earned an NC-17 rating for its extreme violence, and several eye-popping moments of self-mutilation deserve spots in the gore hall of fame. Álvarez also managed to match Raimi’s pace and dedication to little other than scares; it’s a lean and mean genre film that’s still incredibly rewatchable.
Lee Cronin’s original sequel, Evil Dead Rise, got more lukewarm critical notices than the remake, but it’s almost as much of a ferocious good time. While the film succumbs to the 2020s horror trend toward trauma-porn and underlighting-as-atmophere, it doesn’t disappoint in the demonic visuals and mutilation departments. Cronin also proved he had few qualms with putting kids in danger, and delivered some delightfully vile carnage including scalping and eyeball-spitting … high-quality chaos that sits among the best in the genre.
Sébastien Vaniček Was a Canny Choice to Helm ‘Evil Dead Burn’
So far, the modern Evil Dead films have had a different director for each entry, and that’s proven a surprisingly effective strategy, given how crucial Raimi’s auteurship was to the first three pictures. With this weekend’s Evil Dead Burn, the producers have enlisted second-time French director Sébastien Vaniček to bring the mayhem to life. Given the strengths of his prior film, Infested (Vermines), they may have made the right choice.
An old-fashioned creature feature brought viciously into the modern day, Infested boasts some of the most skin-crawling, genuinely squirmy horror set pieces of the last decade, as overgrown spiders take over an apartment block. And, like Raimi, Vaniček did it using largely practical effects, including real spiders. Only a viewer made of stone will be able to make it through the entire film without squirming at some point — and for arachnophobes, just watching might be hilariously out of the question.
If Vaniček brings the same atmospherically chaotic but visually precise intensity and dedication to discomfort to his entry in the long-running series, audiences are in for a treat with Evil Dead Burn. It’s just his unapologetically gross, tense siege-film mentality that the series requires. And if that’s the case, then may horror’s most consistent franchise never die.
- Release Date
-
July 10, 2026
- Runtime
-
120 Minutes
- Director
-
Sébastien Vanicek
- Writers
-
Florent Bernard, Sébastien Vanicek, Sam Raimi
You must be logged in to post a comment Login