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Did you feel Burn had gone through a massive rewrite during filming? In the long opening scene the son is clearly the main character. We stay with him while the brother and French wife walk offscreen to fight. Then the next scene at the funeral, the French wife becomes the main character and the son is mostly forgotten except a long scene with his mom in the attic that makes no sense for a character tertiary to the plot, but would’ve made a lot of sense if he were still the main character. Plus the character’s defining cowardice isn’t established, it just happens out of nowhere half way in. I got the sense the son was originally our lead but rewrites soon into production changed the POV character, leaving us with some vestigial scenes from the initial script.

Also agree with you about the movie being weak. It was joyless, and I hated how it was shot. The framing was always way too close.

But but but what about that one transition that smashes from someone getting hit by a car to a closeup of a woman’s ass dancing????? That’s “so cool” and “whips” and “totally isn’t juvenile bullshit,” right?

While stupid and eye-rolling, I would've taken more of that kind of energy over the dreary trauma excavation of the rest. I agree with the Sofa that an Evil Dead movie doesn't have to be goofy, but I do think it needs at least some manic comic energy. Rise had a ramping sense of that before turning into outright comedy in the climax (much like the first Raimi movie), and the reboot did as well to a much lesser extent. Burn drowns in its own self importance.

I've listened to a number of interviews of Vaniček and co-writer Florent Bernard discussing the film (not because I have any interest in the film itself, but because I'm a fan of Floodcast, the podcast co-hosted by Bernard and Adrien Ménielle) and I have not gotten the impression that there was any rewriting during filming, nor any hint of friction between the two, who are already working on a new project together. If the writing is weak or inconsistent, then at least for Bernard that's very much in line with his previous films (e.g., Nous, les Leroy; Jack Mimoun).

I also didn’t get the feeling that the shift in protagonists was due to rewrites, I don’t think the screenplay was ever good in the first place. But joyless describes the movie well enough.

Fair enough. I guess I was being over charitable in not assuming incompetence.