The Future of EVIL DEAD
Spoilers for Evil Dead Burn ahead!
It turns out Evil Dead Burn was more than just another (fun!) installment in this crazy ass franchise (is franchise the right word?) For the first time*, we got a full on after credits scene with the return of Evil Dead Rise’s Ellie, with a child kill that shocked me more than the entire movie before it.
It was a huge surprise, one that flooded me, and I’m sure all other Evil Dead fans, with questions. Does this have anything to do with Wrath next year? Does this mean a sequel to Rise? Is this going to stop being single stories and become something bigger, something more interconnected? Is Elle going to lead an army of deadites?
To be honest, this intrigues me but also kind of concerns me. I love Evil Dead, but I’ve never really cared for everything to connect. Interconnected universes can be hard. It’s easy for things to get overcomplicated and stuffed, and Evil Dead’s charm has always been simple: a group of people slowly, brutally, and at times hilariously getting picked off and turned into equally brutal and hilarious deadites. When you start becoming a full on franchise, that charm can be sidelined by servicing every angle of people. We’ve seen it work, for sure, but we’ve also seen it at its worst (we did see that earlier this year with another horror franchise). Do we really want Evil Dead to turn into some kind of saga?
But rather than speculate about the future, I actually want to highlight what I think this franchise is getting right. Evil Dead is Sam Raimi’s baby, but it has opened up to more directors to make their own unique spin on it, and I think that’s just awesome.
Let’s be honest, nobody can match Raimi’s style, and for that I think he should remain the only guy to make three of these. As for the rest, let’s just keep giving them to up and comer directors. Yes, there is a formula these movies all follow, beside Army of Darkness (but oh my gosh, can we get another entry that’s similar to Army of Darkness? Give me goofy skeleton deadites!), but it’s the different directors that make them fresh. Not to mention, it helps them get their name out there. Fede Alvarez directed Evil Dead 2013 and got to make an Alien film. Lee Cronin made Rise and revived The Mummy earlier this year. I may not love Evil Dead Burn, but I thought director Sebastian Vanicek gave us some franchise highlights that we’ve never seen before, and I’m curious to what he’ll do next.
EDIT: Hilariously enough, Vanicek is actually on the same boat. In an interview with Variety, Vanicek expressed that he doesn’t plan on making another Evil Dead.
“The only one who can do two Evil Dead movies is Sam Raimi! It’s a franchise that needs a fresh vision and fresh directors all the time. Fans want to be surprised, and if we want to keep the franchise alive, we need those different visions.”
Whatever plans they have for the future, I hope studio heads don’t lose sight of what has been working. It’s a miracle that Evil Dead has remained as strong as it has all this time later, and I think in order for that to continue, it needs to remain a franchise that uses younger, different directors who are given all the freedom to do their own thing. It makes sense given how the franchise started with Raimi, and what better way to honor the spirit of Evil Dead than to keep that going?
*While Burn had the first ever post-credit scene, Evil Dead 2013 did have the franchise’s first mid-credits scene.
