Starting with its inception in 1981, the Evil Dead film series has maintained a distinct identity all its own. And that’s quite an accomplishment in the regularly crowded horror genre. After three movies, original masterminds Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell mostly stepped away in 1992. But the film series was far from done. In 2013 director Fede Álvarez gave us an obviously inspired soft reboot. It was followed by Lee Cronin’s 2023 stand-alone sequel. And now Evil Dead fans have a new entry to once again make them squirm.

“Evil Dead Burn” is another worthy installment that comes from director Sébastien Vaniček. He plucks several elements directly from the franchise’s core to tell his own story, although one with some surprisingly deep connections to its predecessors. Working from a script he co-wrote with Florent Bernard, Vaniček takes his audience on another wince-inducing horror ride. And he doesn’t shirk on the franchise’s key signatures, namely the gore-drenched set pieces and sudden moments of pitch-black humor.

As everyone should know by now, Evil Dead movies aren’t for the faint of heart. But “Burn” ratchets up the grisly horror even more than normal, with Vaniček using nearly everything at his disposal to unsettle his audience. Fish hooks, corkscrews, candle wax, a fountain pen, a dishwasher, a shower curtain – that’s just a small sample of the many objects he weaponizes in some devilishly gnarly ways.

As for the story, it loosely builds itself around the theme of domestic abuse, with characters representing survivors, abusers, and enablers. Souheila Yacoub plays a young woman named Alice. After her abusive husband William (George Pullar) is killed in a car wreck, Alice attends the funeral with his family. Afterwards they all congregate at the family’s homeplace where we get a clear understanding of who these characters are and of the family conflicts that seem ready to boil over.

In addition to Alice, there is William’s angry father Edgar (Erroll Shand) and his oblivious mother Susan (Tandi Wright). There is William’s empathetic but weak-kneed brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and his wife Thya (Luciane Buchanan). Lastly there is William’s grandmother and Susan’s mother Polly (Maude Davey) who is struggling with dementia. Bitterness, favoritism, passivity, negligence, animosity – just some of the sins that paint a troubling picture of this broken family.

But in true Evil Dead fashion, the terror kicks in with the arrival of the Deadites – malevolent demons who violently possess the bodies of the living or dead. They’re summoned by the reading of cursed texts from ancient demonic books such as the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (aka The Book of the Dead). In this case, they’ve been drawn by Joseph’s study of his late grandfather’s research into the Deadites. We learn the missing patriarch devoted his life to studying the Necronomicon and searching for an ancient artifact believed to hold the secret to killing the Deadites.

As franchise fans will expect, the violence unleashed on the family by the Deadites is gruesome, vicious, and sadistic. The movie’s creative uses of blood and gore energizes the horror by its sheer audacity. The bulk of it is realized through a strong reliance on inspired practical effects and terrific makeup artistry. And it’s all enhanced by a slew of crafty camera tricks that rattle us to our core. Vaniček and DP Philip Lozano firmly ground us in the terror with an array of rotating cameras, intense tracking shots, sharp zooms, and more.

It may sound cliché, but once “Evil Dead Burn” has you in its twisted clutches, the movie refuses to let go. While die-hard fans will have a blood-splattered ball with it, the graphic violence is fairly relentless which may end up pushing some folks away. And the film is tagged with an ending that isn’t nearly as potent as everything that comes before it. Yet “Evil Dead Burn” features the same wicked edge that the series is known for while also introducing some compelling new layers to the established lore. And it features two end-credits scenes (yes two, so stay till the very end) that tease some wild and gnarly things to come. Feed me more!