The news that 2026’s reboot, Evil Dead Burn, introduces a whole new setting and setup for the Evil Dead series might come as a surprise, but it is one that fans of the franchise should welcome. It is nigh-on impossible for a horror movie franchise to maintain its critical success for more than a few outings. Everything from the Scream movies to the Conjuring Universe started out strong, only to lose the favor of reviewers as the series continued.
While some franchises, like the Child’s Play movies and SyFy’s Chucky show, have been known to regain critical favor after a few lesser releases, there is only one series that can claim to have consistently impressed reviewers without fail for decades now. Every Evil Dead movie to date has been a critical success, with even the franchise’s worst Rotten Tomatoes rating, for 2013’s loose remake Evil Dead, clocking in at a respectable 64%.
More recently, 2023’s reboot Evil Dead Rise earned a superb 85% from critics, with director Lee Cronin’s outing managing to match the critical rating of Sam Raimi’s iconic original cut classic from 1981. Ironically, consistency has nothing to do with the franchise’s success. On the contrary, part of the reason that the Evil Dead franchise appears to fare so well with critics is the fact that the movies reinvent themselves with every new outing, something that will happen once again in 2026’s upcoming reboot, Evil Dead Burn.
Evil Dead Burn Has A Whole New Story Setup & Setting (Again)
A woman looking horrified next to the Evil Dead Burn logo
Directed by Infested director Sébastien Vaniček, Evil Dead Burn stars Climax’s Souheila Yacoub as a widow who stays at the isolated home of her in-laws after her husband’s death. This tragic reunion soon turns bloody and brutal when someone opens the Evil Dead franchise’s infamous Necronomicon and, before long, the Deadites are back to raise Hell. This marks the first time a haunted house has been used as a setting in the series, but that’s not the movie’s only major change.
After 2023’s Evil Dead Rise brought Deadites to an awkward family reunion in a busy high-rise apartment building in the middle of the city, Evil Dead Burn now takes place during a widow’s meeting with her in-laws in their remote suburban home. Before Evil Dead Rise, 2013’s Evil Dead reboot admittedly shared its woodland cabin setting with the first two movies in the series, but the justification for the characters heading to this setting was entirely original. Instead of a fun group holiday, the conflicted group gathered to help one friend get clean from heroin.
Immediately, this turned 2013’s Evil Dead into a dark character drama well before the Deadites even appeared, where the first movie in the series was lighter, more playful, and less intense until the arrival of the Deadites. 1981’s The Evil Dead began as a fun hangout movie, so it was a brutal shock when the movie’s likable characters suddenly started getting picked off, possessed, and torn apart by Deadites. In contrast, 1987’s Evil Dead II was a much goofier, more fast-paced effort that opened by effectively remaking the first film.
The Evil Dead Franchise Reinvents Itself With Every Movie
Bruce Campbell as Ash with blood running through in Evil Dead II
In Evil Dead II, the woodland cabin setting was the same, but the group of friends was trimmed down to a couple on a romantic holiday. While this change seemed like it would lower the Evil Dead sequel’s body count, Evil Dead II’s more chaotic, cartoonish story soon introduced a slew of new characters and offered a sillier, more blackly comic spin on the events of the original movie. Its twist ending set up 1993’s Army of Darkness, which took proceedings in another direction entirely.
Effectively a historical action adventure comedy with Deadites as its villains, Army of Darkness was even more comedic than Evil Dead II and saw the preceding movie’s beleaguered hero trapped in the Middle Ages, helping King Arthur’s ill-equipped court take on undead monsters. As this rundown implies, Evil Dead Rise, Evil Dead’s ostensible 2013 “remake,” Army of Darkness, Evil Dead II, and The Evil Dead all did their own thing, and the franchise has only succeeded with critics over the years as a result.
Changing The Evil Dead Format Has Kept The Franchise Popular
Lily Sullivan holding a gun in Evil Dead Rise.© Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection
A lot of horror franchises find a profitable niche and stick with it, even if this means letting down viewers who want more novelty and invention with their scares. However, the decision to constantly change the central premise of each movie, along with its setting, is what makes the Evil Dead movies the most consistently acclaimed horror franchise, especially compared to slashers like Scream, Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
While the decision to set Evil Dead Burn in a new setting is risky, Evil Dead Rise’s urban setting also seemed like a risk before the movie proved to be a superb addition to the series. Similarly, the setup of a grieving widow seeking solace at the home of her in-laws might sound too dour and bleak for this infamously playful series, but part of what made Evil Dead Rise so successful was its unexpectedly mean-spirited tone.
Evil Dead Rise pulled no punches, killing off likable characters and making the Deadites more vile than ever. For Evil Dead Burn to outdo its predecessor, wherein a Deadite gleefully threatened to eat the soul of Evil Dead Rise’s pregnant heroine’s foetus the reboot will need to be truly dark. Thus, its grim story setup makes a lot of sense. This plot also allows Evil Dead Burn to sidestep one of the franchise’s biggest story snags.
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In every Evil Dead movie, it is tough to justify just why a character would choose to read from a book as blatantly cursed as the Necronomicon. Evil Dead Rise justified this with comically guileless teens, while 2013’s reboot earned the ire of some reviewers by failing to explain why its characters seemed so determined to doom themselves. In contrast, a character coping with unimaginable grief, like Evil Dead Burn’s heroine, may have a better excuse to seek out paranormal comfort than most of the protagonists of earlier movies in the Evil Dead series.