Evil Dead Burn (2026) is the sixth installment in the Evil Dead film franchise and a direct sequel to Evil Dead Rise (2023). Evil Dead Burn will also act as a prequel to the next installment in the franchise, Evil Dead Wrath, which is expected to hit theaters in 2028. While Evil Dead Burn might not have been quite as polished as Evil Dead Rise, it's still a phenomenal movie that furthers the impressive lore of the Necronomicon and the Deadites.
An Evil Dead movie is only as good as its Deadites, and, fortunately, there are plenty to go around in Evil Dead Burn. The newest installment actively includes more than half a dozen Deadites, with a few even dating back to Evil Dead Rise. This list will take a look at the power level of each Deadite that appears in Evil Dead Burn, and how efficiently they did their jobs.
Joseph Price (Hunter Doohan) is one of the core family members of the Price Family, who, over the course of the film, are hunted down and possessed by Deadites. The first family member to fall prey to this fate is Will Price, Joseph's brother. Joseph is, for all intended purposes, the cowardly character.
When Will attacks his wife and final girl, Alice (Souheila Yacoub), Joseph docilely stands off to the side. Later, when Joseph's girlfriend is being attacked by a Deadite, he abandons her to save himself. Surprisingly, Joseph is one of the last of the Price family to fall to the Deadites, and he barely makes an appearance as a Deadite for more than a minute.
As a Deadite, Joseph attempts to emotionally manipulate Alice, taunting her with the abuse she suffered from her ex-husband, but he never really fights her or causes any real damage. Joseph spilled more blood before he was possessed, when he crushed his Deadite girlfriend's head in with a dishwasher door. Joseph is the first Deadite to die from the Kandarian Dagger, though.
Susan (Tandi Wright) is Joseph and Will's mother, and she is the type of woman who believes that family is everything, no matter what. As her story unfolds, the audience discovers that she gave up her passion to take care of her sickly mother. She claims that she is "Nothing without her family."
She also knew that Will was abusing Alice and did nothing to stop him. Susan makes it through most of the movie without succumbing to evil, but she is forced to watch the Deadites destroy her family. Desperate to believe she can have her family back, Susan willingly allows her long-since-possessed husband, Edgar, to infect her.
Most people see Deadite possession as a fate worse than death and run in the opposite direction, but Susan openly embraces her evil transformation. She deserves credit for being a willing Deadite host, but like Joseph, she didn't really do much as a Deadite. She did get one impressive scene on the ceiling where she hauled Alice up with a plastic shower curtain around her head, suffocating her midair.
Polly (Maude Davey) is Susan's elderly mother and Will and Joseph's grandmother. Polly, tragically, is suffering from dementia, and routinely doesn't recognize main characters, like Alice and Joseph's girlfriend, Thya. She accuses Thya of being a thief trying to make off with her money, and she doesn't remember that the Price family gathered together for Will's funeral.
As heartbroken as her dementia is, she also adds a lot of comedic relief before and after her Deadite possession. Before Polly is infected, she even tries to bargain with Deadite Thya to take her money and leave her family alone. As a Deadite, she's much more unhinged, even willingly cutting off her own leg to escape being tied up.
Polly is the driving force that convinces Susan to join the Deadites, and she's also the only family member that survives the movie. Fans get a brief mid-credit scene of Polly crawling along the road, searching for a new victim with functioning legs, proving she escaped the deadly family reunion. Thya (Luciane Buchanan) is arguably one of the most impressive Deadites in the entire movie.
A lot of the promotional material for Evil Dead Burn specifically focuses on Thya, like her iconic scene of drinking molten wax from a burning candle, and her missing fingers being ripped off in a car door. Thya's death, which saw Deadite Edgar plunge a car headrest through Thya's cheek and neck, is haunting and will make sure the audience never looks at cars the same way again. Impressively enough, most of these gory details were achieved with real, practical effects.
Thya is the second person at the family reunion to fall prey to the Deadites. After Edgar kills her, Thya manages to get inside the house where the Price family is holed up. She torments the family by spilling dark family secrets, tricking Polly by insisting she's there to return what she stole, and even mutilating herself to traumatize the survivors further.
Thya is probably the one who acts the most like a traditional Deadite throughout the entire movie. She even manages to throw Joseph, her boyfriend, into a dishwasher full of knives in a horrifying and agonizing slow sequence of her slowly pushing him onto the blades. Her death as a Deadite is even more gruesome than her human death, making her that much more iconic.
Jessica first appeared in Evil Dead Rise (played by Anna-Maree Thomas), and her most iconic scene has to be the introduction, where she levitates out of the lake and the words "Evil Dead Rise" Rise along with her body. Jessica was infected and slowly transformed into a Deadite after the final showdown with the Abomination in Evil Dead Rise, when she found her apartment building's parking garage covered in blood. By the time she reached her weekend getaway in a lakeside cabin, she had become a Deadite.
Jessica makes another appearance in Evil Dead Burn (played by Greta van den Brink). In fact, she once again opens the movie by killing two men fishing at the same lake from Evil Dead Rise. She is eventually summoned by the appearance of the Kandarian Dagger, an artifact that can destroy Deadites.
To reach the dagger and destroy it, Jessica seeks out Will Price, a relative of the last known man to have the dagger. She causes Will to crash his car, where she infects him and spreads the Deadite infection to the Price family, making her one of the most intelligent and efficient Deadites in the entire movie. It's also worth noting that the use of Jessica kept Evil Dead Burn from needing a proper "Read from the Necronomicon to unleash the Deadites" Scene.
The Deadites had a clear goal, and since they were already unleashed in Evil Dead Rise, there was no need for another summoning scene. This deviation actually worked perfectly, because Evil Dead Burn feels like a true continuation of the film that came before. Evil Dead Burn ramps up the action, but keeps the gory supernatural horror at the forefront thanks to Jessica's smooth transition.
Will might be the first member of the Price family to technically be infected, but Edgar (Erroll Shand) is the clear downfall of his family. Wishing to say goodbye to his son before his death, Edgar approaches his son's coffin and finds that Will might still be alive. Edgar breaks the coffin open to save him, only to be touched by the burning remains of his son and infected.
Edgar's transformation into a Deadite is a slow burn that keeps the entire audience on edge. Edgar is able to infect his family with ease. Things truly kick off when Edgar snaps at the dinner table, shouting at various members of his family, before finally stabbing his dog to death with a fork.
The dog also becomes a Deadite, a stunning twist, because animal Deadites haven't been seen in more than 30 years. With his awesome strength, loyal Deadite dog, and unhinged, menacing demeanor, Edgar easily murders and infects Thya, holds the entire house hostage, and even helps Polly convince his wife to join the Deadites. Edgar needed to be the first member of the family to be infected; otherwise the rest of the family might not have succumbed to their grisly fate.
At the beginning of the film, before Will's death, Will (George Pullar) is clearly set up as an aggressive man who abuses his wife, Alice. This is an important detail after Will becomes a Deadite. He is the first person in the family to be infected, and he manages to lie dormant, even allowing his burnt body to be sealed away in a coffin.
Will bides his time, waiting for the entire family to convene for his funeral, where he successfully infects Edgar. Deadite Will doesn't make another appearance until the end of the movie. Alice, his wife, is the only survivor left, and he comes to kill her and destroy the dagger, a mission the rest of the Deadites failed to accomplish.
Will drags fire everywhere he goes, as a Deadite who seems to be perpetually burning alive. He relentlessly hunts Alice down with seemingly unstoppable strength and devastation in his wake. He can even manipulate the world around Alice to make her see an entire illusion that isn't real.
It takes the dagger to finally destroy Will, but Alice almost fails thanks to Deadite Will's expert manipulation. Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) was the mother from Evil Dead Rise and the first person in the film to be possessed after the Deadites were unleashed. Ellie's story is extremely heartbroken because she is a struggling single mother who will do anything for her kids, only to be the one hunting them down after being possessed.
By the end of Evil Dead Rise, Ellie combines with her two Deadite children to become the Abomination, an amalgamation of multiple Deadites in one massive, powerful form. Fans never expected to see Ellie again, because the Abomination was fed through a wood chipper and destroyed at the end of Evil Dead Rise. Somehow, though, Ellie makes an appearance in Evil Dead Burn's final post-credit scene.
She returns in her original Deadite form, first appearing in a mirror, and then using that mirror to escape back into the real world. Ellie still being alive is enough to prove she's not just the most powerful Deadite in the movie; she will likely be a driving force in Evil Dead Wrath.