‘Evil Dead Burn’ movie review: Sébastien Vaniček’s splattercraft is dragged into the grave by a necrotic screenplay

Sébastien Vaniček has inherited one of cinema’s most stubbornly unkillable legacies. Since Sam Raimi stopped directing the Evil Dead films he created in the ‘80s, the franchise has evolved into a publicly funded laboratory for genre directors with strong visual instincts and very specific psychological fixations. Fede Álvarez translated the post- Saw decade into an industrial-grade bodily punishment in 2013, and Lee Cronin relocated the Deadites from isolated cabins to a pressure cooker of an apartment tower. Now, Evil Dead Burn hands the mythology to the French filmmaker behind Infested , whose fascination with invasive violence remains intact, even if franchise obligations frequently tone down the far harsher traditions of New French Extremity.