How Evil Dead Burn Upended a 13-Year Rotten Tomatoes Streak

By the time critics' first reactions began to surface, Evil Dead Burn had already messed with the franchise's Rotten Tomatoes rhythm — and in a way that got people talking. Short takes arrived fast. Long takes followed. Opinions split. But one early fact stuck: the film sits at an 80% Rotten Tomatoes rating before its wide release.

That score is no small thing. It signals enthusiasm from a slice of critics and hints that a fresh director might have tapped something useful out of the series' blood-soaked playbook. Sebastian Vanicek, a filmmaker with only one feature to his name before this, is steering a franchise whose early life was shaped by Sam Raimi. Raimi helmed the original trilogy and set a tone — part manic, part slapstick, part pure terror — that later directors like Fede Álvarez and Lee Cronin would riff on in their own ways.

So what does an 80% rating actually mean for longtime fans? It means some critics are calling Evil Dead Burn the best non-Raimi entry to date, praising its relentless energy and willingness to ride the genre's extremes. Others have been less forgiving, calling it the franchise's low point. Movies that provoke that kind of split often linger in the conversation longer than those everyone simply agrees on.

If you like the scoreboard, here’s where the franchise sits on Rotten Tomatoes: Evil Dead II leads with 88%, followed by The Evil Dead and Evil Dead Rise at 85% each. Evil Dead Burn is currently at 80%, while Army of Darkness and the 2013 Evil Dead reboot sit at 68% and 64%, respectively. Numbers, of course, don’t tell the whole story. Tone and ambition do. Mood and audience appetite matter more than a single percentage point.

The film centers on Alice, a widow who shows up to a remote house to mourn, only to find the dead refusing to stay dead. The premise leans on classic franchise DNA — a secluded cabin, grief turned to dread, an increasingly claustrophobic sense of being hunted by forces you don't fully understand. Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan and Lucian Buchanan are among the names anchoring the cast, supported by a wider ensemble that helps sell both the emotional stakes and the splatter-driven shocks.

Vanicek's approach, according to early reviews, favors intensity over irony. There's less of the meta wink that has threaded some modern horror; instead, this entry reportedly leans into discomfort and raw momentum. That tonal choice will please viewers who want to be unsettled. It will frustrate others who crave the winking charm of Raimi's earliest work.

Context matters too. Sam Raimi returned to the universe as creator and executive producer for the TV series Ash vs Evil Dead, which scored a near-perfect 99% on Rotten Tomatoes and ran for three seasons — a reminder that the franchise can be reinvented successfully in different formats. Each reinvention has its own priorities. Some aim for laughs. Some aim for shock. Some aim to do both simultaneously.

Whatever camp you’re in, the bigger takeaway is simple: Evil Dead Burn has reopened the debate about what this series can still be.

It arrives in theaters on Friday, July 10, 2026. Will it win over the skeptics? Will it become the midnight-movie obsession a new generation adopts? The previews are loud, the reactions are mixed, and the best answer will come in the dark, with popcorn and a crowd.