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- Evil Dead Burn directed and co-written by Sébastien Vanicek; third film drops Sam Raimi's slapstick for sadistic body horror.
- Evil Dead reboot and Evil Dead Rise confirmed to share the same modern-era universe with Evil Dead Burn.
- The story centers on the Price family at grandfather Benjamin's cabin; Joseph uncovers the Kandarian Dagger, drawing the Deadites.
- Benjamin's journals link him to the Circle of Wise Men and Professor Raymond Knowby, tying back to the 1981 original.
- Two post-credits scenes hint previously obliterated Deadites can return and tease expansion alongside prequel Evil Dead Wrath (1972).
Warning: This post contains spoilers for Evil Dead Burn, now in theaters.
If you’re not a fan of seeing people get boiled alive, impaled with the metal poles of a car headrest, or stabbed by every sharp kitchen utensil that exists, then Evil Dead Burn probably isn’t for you. But if you have kept up with the trajectory of horror legend Sam Raimi‘s long-running demonic possession franchise, these types of brutally imaginative acts of violence are simply par for the course.
Directed and co-written by French filmmaker Sébastien Vanicek (Infested), Burn marks the third entry in the series to abandon the signature slapstick humor of Raimi’s original trilogy (including The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness) in favor of gleefully sadistic body horror. And this time, we finally get confirmation that, rather than serving as standalone sequels, the modern era of these films—which began with Fede Álvarez’s 2013 soft reboot Evil Dead and continued with Lee Cronin’s 2023 update Evil Dead Rise—all take place within the same universe.
While Burn‘s central story can be understood without any prior Evil Dead knowledge, fans of the franchise will likely quickly pick up on the connective tissue that ties the newer movies together—along with a few nods to Raimi’s older lore.
How Evil Dead Burn connects to the previous movies
Building on Rise‘s cold open, which saw the Deadites wreak havoc on a trio of unsuspecting lake goers, Burn begins with a possessed Jessica (Greta Van Den Brink, who previously served as the stunt double of Anna-Maree Thomas’ Jessica in Rise) reemerging from the aforementioned lake to deliver a torturous end to two buddies attempting to enjoy a day of fishing.
After washing her hands of that mess, Jessica heads to a nearby road to await her next victim: Will Price (George Pullar), the abusive husband of final-girl-in-the-making Alice (Souheila Yacoub). The majority of Burn revolves around the Price family’s post-funeral gathering at Will’s late grandfather Benjamin’s dilapidated cabin in the woods, where Will’s father Edgar (Erroll Shand), mother Susan (Tandi Wright), grandmother Polly (Maude Davey), brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan), soon-to-be-sister-in-law Thya (Luciane Buchanan), and family dog Max (animal lovers beware!) all eventually fall under the Deadites’ control, leaving Alice to scratch, claw, and weed-whack her way out of certain doom.
Along the way, we learn why the Deadites have chosen to prey upon this particular family without ever being summoned by a reading from one of the three volumes of the Necronomicon. It turns out Joseph was meddling in historian Benjamin’s extensive research into the Book of the Dead and uncovered the Kandarian Dagger, an ancient blade created by the secret cult known as the Circle of Wise Men that is capable of killing Deadites, from its hiding spot in the cabin’s wall. This instantly alerts nearby Deadite Jessica to the dagger’s presence, prompting her to turn her attention to eliminating the Price family and destroying it.
Benjamin’s journals reveal he was a member of the Circle of Wise Men and an associate of Professor Raymond Knowby, the archaeologist who originally unearthed the Necronomicon at the ruins of Castle Kandar and kickstarted the events of the 1981 film. They also contain a newspaper clipping referencing the cabin fire from 2013’s Evil Dead.
What’s next for the Evil Dead franchise?
The forthcoming Evil Dead Wrath, which is slated to hit theaters on April 7, 2028, is a prequel film from Francis Galluppi that will be set in 1972, nine years before the events of the first Evil Dead.
However, Evil Dead Burn‘s two post-credits scenes hint that the series plans to expand its present-day storyline even more.
Not only do we see Deadite Grandma Polly infect a young woman who pulls her car over to try to help when she spots a legless Polly attempting to drag herself down the road, but the Deadite version of scary mommy Ellie from Rise also makes a surprise return to kill the daughter of the owner of the crematorium where Will’s funeral took place. While it’s unclear how Ellie has managed to once again rise from the undead after her body was put through a wood chipper, the suggestion that previously obliterated Deadites can now reappear opens the franchise up to some exciting new possibilities.
For now, our advice for avoiding any and all Deadite run-ins remains the same as ever: Don’t read from the book!
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