Evil Dead Burn Comes Home This Month With Huge 4K Collector’s Editions to Follow
The Deadites are heading home, and as usual they are not bringing a bottle of wine and politely leaving before midnight. STUDIOCANAL has announced the UK home entertainment release of Evil Dead Burn, with the latest entry in the long running Evil Dead franchise arriving on digital platforms on 24 August, followed by 4K Ultra HD, Blu ray and DVD releases on 12 October.
For collectors, the October release is considerably more exciting than a standard trip to the shops for a plastic case. Evil Dead Burn will receive both a 4K Ultra HD SteelBook and an Ultimate Collector’s Edition, with STUDIOCANAL describing the two editions as global exclusives.
Directed by Sébastien Vaniček, who made his feature debut with the acclaimed French creature horror Infested, Evil Dead Burn continues a franchise that has demonstrated a remarkable ability to reinvent itself without abandoning the gallons of bodily fluids, mutilation and demonic unpleasantness that made everyone love it in the first place.
Evil Dead Burn Gets the Full Collector’s Edition Treatment
The 4K SteelBook features new artwork created by Adam Middleton in collaboration with Vaniček, while the larger Ultimate Collector’s Edition comes with exclusive artwork by Sophie Bland and is housed inside a rigid box with a magnetic opening.
STUDIOCANAL certainly hasn’t been stingy with the contents. Inside are storyboards, reproduced pages from the Book of the Dead, alternate poster art cards, a production notes book and two posters. For Evil Dead collectors who have already spent several decades accumulating increasingly elaborate editions of the films, it appears another space on the shelf is about to disappear.
The 4K Ultra HD and Blu ray editions will also include three announced special features: The Hot Shot: Evil Dead Burn’s One Shot Sequence, Evil Dead: Blazing the Trail and This One’s Gonna Burn. The first should be particularly interesting for anyone fascinated by the mechanics of horror filmmaking, offering a closer examination of the film’s one shot sequence.
The film itself centres upon a woman dealing with the death of her husband who travels to stay with her in laws at their isolated family home. Seeking comfort from family naturally goes spectacularly wrong because this is Evil Dead, and family members begin transforming into Deadites one after another. What begins as a gathering between relatives consequently develops into the sort of family reunion where being asked an awkward question about your personal life becomes the least of your problems.
Souheila Yacoub, previously seen in Dune: Part Two, leads a cast that also includes Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Errol Shand, George Pullar, Maude Davey and Greta Van Den Brink.
Vaniček co wrote the screenplay with Florent Bernard, while two names intimately connected with Evil Dead history remain involved behind the scenes: Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi produce, with Bruce Campbell among the executive producers alongside Romel Adam, Lee Cronin and Jose Canas.
Behind the camera, Vaniček is joined by cinematographer Philip Lozano, production designer Nick Connor, editor Maxime Caro and costume designer Sarah Voon. Connor and Voon already have connections to the wider Evil Dead universe through Ash vs Evil Dead and Evil Dead Rise respectively.
More Than 40 Years of Evil Dead
It is remarkable that a series which began with a tiny independent horror film shot under notoriously difficult conditions has survived for more than four decades and continues to find new ways of unleashing the Deadites.
Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead arrived in 1981, introducing audiences to Bruce Campbell’s Ash Williams, an isolated cabin in the woods and the demonic forces unleashed through the Book of the Dead. Its combination of inventive camerawork, ferocious practical effects and sheer filmmaking determination turned a low budget production into one of horror’s genuine landmarks.
Raimi returned with Evil Dead II in 1987, pushing the mixture of horror, slapstick and outrageous physical comedy much further, before Army of Darkness sent Ash into a medieval fantasy adventure in 1992. Campbell’s chainsaw wielding hero eventually returned decades later for three seasons of the television series Ash vs Evil Dead, proving that age had done absolutely nothing to improve Ash’s decision making abilities.
The cinematic series, meanwhile, successfully moved beyond Ash. Fede Álvarez’s Evil Dead in 2013 stripped away much of the comedy and delivered an exceptionally bloody modern interpretation of the material, while Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise in 2023 moved the nightmare away from the traditional cabin setting and into a Los Angeles apartment building.
That flexibility has become one of the franchise’s greatest strengths. Evil Dead no longer requires Ash, a particular cabin or even a specific group of characters. What it does require is demonic possession, extreme physical horror, a willingness to make its characters suffer terribly and filmmakers prepared to push everything considerably further than good taste would normally recommend.
Evil Dead Burn now continues that evolution under Vaniček, with the secluded family home providing another new environment for the Deadites to thoroughly ruin.
The good news for fans is that you don’t have to wait until October to see it at home. Evil Dead Burn will be available to buy and rent through digital platforms from 24 August, just one week after STUDIOCANAL’s announcement.
Physical media collectors will need a little more patience. The 4K Ultra HD, Blu ray and DVD editions arrive on 12 October, with the SteelBook and Ultimate Collector’s Edition giving dedicated Evil Dead fans the suitably excessive versions they have probably already accepted they are going to buy. You can Pre-order HERE.
After more than 40 years of cabins, chainsaws, boomsticks, Necronomicons, Deadites and enough fake blood to concern several environmental agencies, Evil Dead remains one of horror cinema’s most durable franchises. Evil Dead Burn is the latest reminder that whatever you do to this series, it simply refuses to stay dead.
