'Evil Dead Burn' Director Cut Scene to Dodge NC-17 Rating

Director Sébastien Vaniček trimmed a single sequence from “Evil Dead Burn” to keep the horror sequel at an R rating, he told SlashFilm, after the Motion Picture Association initially flagged the film for the more restrictive NC-17.

Vaniček said the scene in question remains largely intact but plays somewhat differently than his original cut. “The scene is still here. The scene is still intense and pretty brutal,” he said, describing his unedited version as colder and rawer rather than more graphic. “So I changed some little things, but the scene is not 100% different. And that allowed the movie to be R-rated and not NC-17.”

In an earlier interview with ScreenRant, Vaniček said he faced no creative limits during filming itself. “During the shooting, I was able to do whatever I wanted. There were no limits,” he said, adding that the constraints emerged only once the ratings board reviewed the finished film and flagged specific sequences as excessive for a general audience. He has suggested a more violent director’s cut could surface eventually, telling one outlet that version “will be way more violent than what we will have in theater.”

The trim follows a familiar pattern in the franchise. Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead II” bypassed an MPA rating entirely in 1987 rather than cut for an R, while 1992’s “Army of Darkness” and the 2013 “Evil Dead” reboot both required editing down from initial NC-17 rulings. The most recent entry, 2023’s “Evil Dead Rise,” underwent similar trims before release.

“Evil Dead Burn” opened this weekend as the sixth installment in the franchise producers Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Bruce Campbell have shepherded since 1981. The film follows Alice, played by Souheila Yacoub, who retreats to her in-laws’ remote home after her husband’s death only to watch the family transform into demonic Deadites one by one. Producer Tapert has described the story as rooted in an abusive marriage the victim’s family refused to believe.

Reviews have been largely positive, with the film holding scores in the 70s to low 90s percent range across critics on Rotten Tomatoes, continuing a run in which every entry in the franchise has landed on the positive side of the aggregator’s scale. Box office tracking put its opening in the $20 million to $25 million range against a reported $20 million budget, a modest but healthy return compared with the bigger-budgeted “Moana” remake also opening this weekend.

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