The Necronomicononsense continues!
asserted
Necronomicononsense → continue → ?
Evil Dead Burn (now on HBO Max), the sixth film in the undead horror franchise, finds creator Sam Raimi again taking on a producer role, subbing directorial duties to a young inspired whippersnapper.
asserted
Raimi → find → whippersnapper
In this case, it’s Sebastien Vanicek, whose oops-all-spiders flick Infested impressed the veteran filmmaker — and who no doubt hopes to follow Evil Dead predecessors Fede Alvarez (Alien: Romulus) and Lee Cronin (Lee Cronin’s The Mummy) to a solid Hollywood career.
asserted
who → ’ → career
One thing’s for sure, though: the guy knows how to deliver a good blood-drenched set piece.
asserted
guy → ’ → piece
We open with a classic tone-setter, a we’re baaaa-aack reintroduction to the signature Evil Dead Deadites — for the uninitiated: they’re a slight variation on trad zombies — that’s as puketastic as mainstream horror flicks get.
asserted
flicks → open → zombies
Don’t worry, it only gets worse from there.
asserted
it → worry → ?
It just depends on your tolerance for minimalist storytelling featuring maximalist gloop.
asserted
It → depend → gloop
Next we meet the characters we probably don’t really care about beyond the manner in which they die — the gloopier, the better, of course.
asserted
they → meet → course
Will (George Pullar) is a toxic-alpha type who abuses his wife Alice (Souheila Yacoub).
asserted
who → abuse → wife
During a night out, they quarrel as Will’s little beta brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan) look concerned.
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brother → quarrel → night
Alice storms out and Will drives off despite having had a couple.
asserted
Will → storm → couple
He wrecks bad, and she finishes him off, burning him alive, surely making the world a better place.
asserted
world → wreck → him
See, Will and Joseph’s grandpa was an occultist who fuxxed with the Necronomicon.
asserted
who → see → Necronomicon
We learn this as Alice bunks with her in-laws for reasons that escape me, mostly because I prefer to think logically.
asserted
I → learn → me
She’s stricken with mixed feelings regarding the demise of her asshat spouse, but Will’s mother Susan (Tandi Wright), father Edgar (Erroll Shand) and dementia-stricken grandma Polly (Maude Davey) don’t know the truth about their darling boy.
asserted
mother → stricken → boy
Grandpa’s stuff is still up in the attic, and among it is a dagger that’s the only thing that can kill Deadites.
asserted
that → ’ → Deadites
And the Deadites want it, because then they can’t be killed, thus proving that they also think logically.
asserted
they → want → it
Which means they’ll convert anyone in their way into Deadites in the most sickeningly gross manner possible, thus allowing the new Deadites to do even more sickeningly gross things to themselves and others.
asserted
Deadites → mean → themselves
Are we having fun yet?
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we → have → fun
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?
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It → remind → You
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (note: the apostrophe is possessive)
asserted
apostrophe → note → ?
Yacoub is a more-than-capable final girl, but since she’s playing a French woman, let’s coin a new term: the femme finale.
asserted
’s → play → term
Any supertextual thematics about the nastiness of domestic violence are completely obliterated by the fact that Evil Dead Burn is little more than a blecch fugue, an escalating display of gore including but not limited to blood, mucus, brains, and assorted viscera.
asserted
Burn → obliterate → blood
It’s nasty nasty nasty, and about as mean as horror gets this side of Terrifier.
asserted
horror → ’ → Terrifier
The movie has the potential to be something more — the Deadites as Symbolic Manifestations of Grief and Loss in a feminist revenge tale, perhaps, but Vanicek’s ambitions are driven primarily by physicality and tactility, staging invigoratingly complex set pieces boasting impressive practical gore FX for stabbings and beheadings and the like.
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ambitions → have → stabbings
Which leaves me torn — in half, of course, still alive and looking at my innards.
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Which → leave → innards
It’s easy to be impressed with Vanicek’s kinetic oners, action-sequence choreography and cinematography.
asserted
It → ’ → oners
It’s also easy to mourn the lack of Raimi-esque comedy (it’s present, but sporadic at best) and not give a single damn about these characters, who are functionally little more than slabs of meat ripe for inventive slaughter.
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who → ’ → slaughter
I felt the urp rising in my throat on multiple occasions, and I wasn’t sure if it was the nihilistic butchery carnage of it all or the fear that Burn might become the wearisome 21st-century horror cliche in which monsters are Symbolic Manifestations of Grief and Loss in a feminist revenge tale.
uncertain
monsters → feel → tale
Probably better that it’s more the former, then.
asserted
it → ’ → ?
If you can accept it on those terms, then STREAM IT.
asserted
you → accept → IT
Werner Herzog hugged him once.
asserted
Herzog → hug → him
The Aporia
