‘Evil Dead Burn’ Review: Effective Piece of Gross-Out Guignol

The original “Evil Dead” films were pivotal in the creation of the multiplex gore matrix. Yet there was a lightness to them; the second one, “Evil Dead II” (1987), was even a kind of gonzo comedy. (The very phrase “evil dead” was a joke, a knowing redundancy.) But there’s nothing light, or funny, about “Evil Dead Burn.” The third movie in the series since its 2013 reboot (and the sixth entry in the franchise overall), it’s a stand-alone drama of family rancor and family demons — at times, it suggests a Eugene O’Neill play staged by Herschell Gordon Lewis. But on those terms it’s an effective piece of gross-out guignol.  

Alice (Souheila Ycoub), who is French, with pink hair and an air of pouty aggrievement, is married to William (George Pullar), one of those sensitive-types-who’s-really-a-controlling-bastard. The two own a restaurant and are considering having a child, but their marriage has turned toxic. He is soon killed in a car crash, hitting the she-demon from the film’s lakeside prelude in a head-on collision.

After the funeral, as his body is being prepped for cremation, it bursts out of the coffin, and the roving spirit of evil deadness enters Edgar (Erroll Shand), the family patriarch — though I must say he’s a pretty scuzzy patriarch, resembling nothing so much as an extra from “The Hills Have Eyes.” As Edgar and the clan gather in their second home (a woodland manse in a state of high decay), each family member, in turn, goes evil dead on Alice, the interloper who none of them can stand (she’s not even pretending to be bereaved).

As staged by the French director Sébastien Vaniček, the violence, while nonstop, remains aggressively “thematic,” as the bottled-up family tensions and angers come out in the form of gnashing, bashing, gouging, severing, impaling, dismembering. “Evil Dead Burn” should win the approval of those who favor practical effects, even if in this case…