Evil Dead Burn Hits HBO Max Today. Its $72 Million Box Office Looks Like a Letdown Next to Rise's $147 Million, but It Was a Quiet Win

Here is something I keep noticing about the way we talk about horror box office. We compare every sequel to the best number the franchise ever posted, then act surprised when the math looks sad. By that standard, Evil Dead Burn, which arrives on HBO Max tonight, had a rough summer. By almost any other standard, it did exactly what a $20 million horror movie is supposed to do.

A quick note on how I am approaching this: I am working from the release schedule, the reported numbers and the published reviews, so this is an analysis of the movie's run and a guide to your weekend, not a scene-by-scene review. Every opinion below is about the business and about what the critics' scores suggest, and I will tell you when I am guessing.

Where to watch Evil Dead Burn right now

If you only came for the logistics, here they are. The short version: HBO Max is the subscription home, and every other route is either cable or pay-per-title.

The box office math: Burn vs. Rise

I built this little scoreboard myself because the headline number, $72.3 million, means nothing until you set it next to something. The obvious comparison is the film right before it, 2023's Evil Dead Rise, which stands as the franchise's biggest hit.

Compiled by us from figures reported by iHorror, CBR and Wikipedia. The percentages are our own arithmetic. U.S. total for Burn: $32.2 million.

Two honest caveats before I get to my opinion. First, a gross is not a profit. As a rule of thumb, studios keep roughly half of ticket sales, and a reported budget usually leaves out marketing, so "3.6 times" is a mood, not an accounting statement. Second, I cannot see Warner Bros.' books, so I will not tell you this was a windfall. What the numbers do say is simple: it cost little, it earned several times that, and it did so in a theatrical market where plenty of bigger movies lose money.

What critics actually said

The reviews are a genuine split, and I think the split is more useful than the score. On Rotten Tomatoes the film sits around 70% from more than 200 critics, and iHorror's tally adds a 54 on Metacritic and a B CinemaScore from opening-weekend audiences. Translation: plenty of people liked it, few people loved it, and almost nobody called it a disaster.

The positive reviews tend to praise the filmmaking. The Los Angeles Times' critic highlighted a mix of practical and digital effects that works well, and said plenty of viewers will happily go along with what is on screen. The Guardian gave it three stars out of five. The harsher end of the spectrum went after the writing: The Australian's two-and-a-half-star review found the dialogue weak, much of the acting broad and the plot more of an obstacle between gory set pieces. The Rotten Tomatoes audience score has hovered in the mid-70s.

The premise, per iHorror, swaps the franchise's famous cabin for a funeral. A widow named Alice, played by Souheila Yacoub, takes refuge at her in-laws' isolated house, and the family begins to come apart. French director Sébastien Vaniček, who made the 2023 spider horror Infested, co-wrote it with Florent Bernard. Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert produce. And MovieWeb notes something I find quietly impressive: this is the only long-running horror series where every film holds above 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. Burn keeps that streak alive.

A horror movie that triples its budget is not a failure. It is a business model most of Hollywood would kill for.

Why I don't buy the "flop" label

Here is my case, and I will make it as plainly as I can. The "Burn made half of Rise" story is true and it is also the least interesting way to read the data. I see three things the headline skips.

The cost. Rise's total was bigger, but Burn's math works at a $20 million budget. In the movie business, "smaller" and "unsuccessful" are different words, and horror is the genre that proves it every year.

The calendar. Burn opened July 10. A week later, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey arrived and began taking over premium screens. I cannot prove that hurt Burn, and I would not pretend to. But a gory R-rated sequel usually needs a couple of weeks of word of mouth, and it got seven days before the biggest movie of the summer showed up.

The second life. This is the part I care about most. Burn hit digital rental on August 4, just over three weeks after opening, and CBR reports it performed exceptionally well on rental and purchase. It reached 4K and Blu-ray on September 22, and now HBO Max and a Saturday HBO triple feature. That is not a studio panicking. That is a studio running the modern playbook: theaters first, then every other window in quick succession, with the October horror season as the finish line.

Now the counterargument, because I owe you one. Half of Rise's global total is a real drop, and it is fair to wonder whether the franchise is losing some of its pull. Evil Dead Wrath, directed by Francis Galluppi, finished shooting in Auckland at the end of May and is dated April 7, 2028, which means a long wait. If Wrath's budget stays this disciplined, I will happily call the series healthy. If it grows without a bigger audience arriving to match, then Burn's quiet win will look like the high-water mark of a smart strategy rather than a trend.

Watch it, wait, or skip it?

I wrote this guide from the reviews, not from a personal screening, so treat it as a decision aid and not a verdict. The point is to match the movie to the kind of night you are having.

Your Saturday HBO marathon schedule

HBO is airing three Evil Dead films back to back on Saturday, October 3, in release order. If you want to refresh yourself before Burn, this is the easiest way to do it.

One more thing worth knowing: Evil Dead Wrath stars Charlotte Hope, Jessica McNamee, Zach Gilford and Josh Helman, and an animated continuation of Ash vs Evil Dead is also in development, which would be the first new Ash Williams story since Starz cancelled that series in 2018.

Evil Dead Burn questions, answered fast