INTERVIEW: Director Sébastien Vaniček Wants ‘Evil Dead Burn’ To Shock Audiences

Sébastien Vaniček, director of Evil Dead Burn, isn’t interested in playing it safe with the newest instalment in the long-running horror franchise.

“I want to disturb, I want to shock, I want to hurt the audience,” he says.

Once the credits roll, you’ll know he succeeded.

Supanova was lucky enough to speak with Vaniček ahead of the film’s release in Australian cinemas on July 9.

Vaniček hails from France, a country responsible for some of the finest horror films of the past two decades. Those films have become known for a uniquely brutal style rarely matched by the cinematic output of other nations. When asked what distinctly French identity he brought to the Evil Dead franchise, Vaniček points to the grounded realism that underpins even his country’s most extreme genre cinema.

“I think it’s the rawness and the fact that we are trying to make our movies really grounded. I don’t know if it’s coming from the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave) legacy, but when we are doing genre films, they are always really grounded. That’s what I wanted to bring with me.

“These are the movies that shocked me. When you are doing an Evil Dead movie, you want to shock the audience. You want them to feel physically drained by the brutality of your scenes. What’s the most brutal thing I can do? How can I shoot it? And that’s where I’m more French than American.”

Evil Dead Burn isn’t Vaniček’s first horror outing. His astonishingly confident debut was 2023’s Infested, a tense chiller and an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare. Reflecting on what he learned from that production and carried into Burn, he explains:

“I’m always learning. I learned a lot while I was writing Infested, and when I directed it and then when I edited it. It’s like if you are cooking and you discover that you are missing a little bit of salt, a little bit of lemon. And that’s what I did with Burn is like, I was, okay, that’s the moment, I know that on Infested, I missed some lemon, and on Burn, I put the lemon.”

When it comes to all-out gore, Vaniček definitely squeezes plenty of lemon into the wounds. The Evil Dead series has always been synonymous with blood and guts, but Burn pushes the violence so far that it briefly crossed a line with the American ratings board.

“Since we did practical effects, it was very realistic. It was very, very disturbing. Even on set, we were like, ‘Oh, that’s very gross.’ It’s draining you out of your energy and at some point it’s getting hopeless. There’s one moment where we crossed the bar of NC-17.”

In the end, only minor adjustments were needed to bring the film back within R-rating territory. “And then I had to go back to editing and just go back to R-rated. It was just a little bit of a jigsaw puzzle. You know, just put this here, put that there.”

Legendary producers Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell proved to be enthusiastic supporters throughout the production, encouraging Vaniček to embrace the franchise’s uncompromising spirit.

“They were just giving me energy and they were just telling me to go have fun, enjoy and no limits. When we wrote the script, they were here just to read the script with us, just to be sure that we were going in a good direction. They wanted us to succeed. And I think that’s the best thing we can say about them. They don’t want to put a director in shoes that don’t fit. They want to make sure that the director will succeed and that the movie will succeed.”

Filming took place in New Zealand, an experience Vaniček describes as both exciting and intimidating.

“It was amazing and scary because I was 20,000 kilometers from home. I’m living in France and New Zealand is basically the opposite of the world. You have 12 hours of time difference with your family and friends. You feel alone. But I met amazing people that felt like a family over there, people I want to work with in the future. So, on set it was amazing, and I’m also a big rugby lover, and it’s the land of the All Blacks, so I was able to go see them playing rugby, and so I felt at home.”

At its core, Evil Dead Burn is a story about a fractured family grappling with loss, grief and the shadow of domestic violence. Establishing that family dynamic became one of Vaniček’s highest priorities as production began.

“The first scene we rehearsed together was the dinner scene because that’s where all the leverage, all the weights and the problems and the conflicts are starting to burn. We talked a lot about their characters, their bonds, their relationship, and how they behave with each other.”

While audiences can expect spectacular practical effects and relentless demonic carnage, Vaniček says the emotional story beneath the horror was just as important to get right.

“I hope Alice’s story is something that will stay with the audience, no matter if you are a male or female. What’s so cathartic about horror movies is what’s happening is not realistic. So you are afraid of things that don’t exist. But we have some layers of writing where we are talking about real life, real horror. It’s hidden, but it’s here. And if some people can think about it and talk about it, that would be a very good thing.”

One thing audiences shouldn’t expect is restraint. Vaniček insists Evil Dead Burn was always intended to be confrontational, even if that meant making viewers uncomfortable.

“I remember some test screenings where it was like, the movie is great, but this particular moment we hate. And I say, yeah, but that’s Evil Dead. It has to be immoral. If you are doing an Evil Dead movie and you are following morality and you are trying to be politically correct, you are doing the wrong job.”

Evil Dead Burn is now possessing cinemas around Australia!