This past week saw the release of a new entry in the Evil Dead series with Evil Dead Burn. Reception has been mostly positive, though there’s always going to be a very vocal minority when it comes to any major horror franchise. I personally really enjoyed it, and it felt like a massive step up from 2023’s Evil Dead Rise, which I found to be very generic. The theme of family was really well done, and I enjoyed how much it fell in line with French Extreme films of the 2000s.
If you saw the film, it’s likely that you noticed a few different Easter Eggs from other films in the franchise. And obviously, you saw the word spoilers in the title, so if you DIDN’T see it, and still want to go in fresh, make sure to come back to this article once you have. Because we’re spoiling some stuff!
If you stayed through the credits, you would have been treated to two different scenes: the first was Grandma Polly pulling her legless body down the street, only to have a woman drive up on her, get out of her car, and get attacked. The evil lives on. Not completely necessary given that we already saw Grandma had escaped from the chair by sawing off her leg. We know that the evil is out there already. But I understand that audiences need absolutely everything spelled out for them.
The second scene took place in the morgue, where the Morgue Manager, whom we met earlier, is explaining to her daughter that they keep the ashes for people who don’t have family to take them. One of the urns happens to have the name Ellie Bixler on it. The daughter, left alone, looks in the mirror, sees Deadite Ellie, and gets murdered. It felt like something you’d usually see from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, complete with the ridiculous one-liner of “Mommy’s Back.”
I get that Ellie is a popular character from Rise, and I really like Alyssa Sutherland, but this just leads to so many questions. I’ve seen some people upset that this breaks the rules of Evil Dead, and bringing her back really complicates things. I won’t entirely argue against that, but Evil Dead has never been a franchise known for its continuity. The rules of what the Deadites can and can’t do have always been a bit flimsy, so I’m okay with a little resurrection. One thing that these newer Evil Dead movies are establishing is that there are multiple Books of the Dead, and they all have a bit of a different flavor to them. Rise seems to be the most violent of them all, so maybe with that also comes an easier time resurrecting? Either way, it’s not a dealbreaker.
What I couldn’t stop thinking about was how the hell Ellie’s ashes even got there. We’ve already seen that this place is out in the middle of the woods. Ellie clearly died in the city. Why were her ashes transported there? They’ve already made it clear that she has no family, so why would they be taken there? Never mind the fact that Ellie ended up in a woodchipper, so how would they even know which parts were hers when doing the cremation? I know, we’re not supposed to ask these questions and are just supposed to enjoy the fun tease, but it made little sense the more I thought about it. Though, with Wrath being a prequel, it is odd to tease something that we won’t be getting a follow-up to in the next film. Maybe time travel is about to come into play. Please, no.
The other fun moment that certainly got a reaction in my theater is when Grandma Polly is going up the stairs on the slow people mover. Bruce Campbell’s photo is one of the many on the wall behind her. The photo of Bruce used (if my memory recall is decent) is actually his headshot, which is, and has been, his profile photo on IMDb for ages. But the pure fact that it’s there means that they can somehow connect Ash Williams to this family. Maybe he’s a distant cousin. The most likely explanation is that it’s simply a fun Easter egg for Evil Dead fans to go, “Hey, it’s Bruce!” which it most assuredly did. It’s a small thread left hanging if they want to explore it more in the future, however.
Sadly, the film did make less money at the box office than Rise, which had the disadvantage of coming out before people were fully comfortable with going back to theaters post-COVID. And while we have another film, Evil Dead Wrath, already in post-production and are sure to get one more release, who’s to say what happens after that? If Wrath has a similar trajectory, then we could be seeing the end of the series in real time. Or maybe, with the popularity of Ellie Bixler, they’ll end up making more of a Rise sequel after.
What do you think? Did you like the mid-credits and post-credits scenes? Where would you like to see Evil Dead go next?
Evil Dead Burn is currently playing In Theaters.