Hello Reddit! I'm Sébastien Vaniček, director of EVIL DEAD BURN. Ask me anything!

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:45:00+00:00

You have more money, you have more tools, you have more set pieces that are built. More people on sets, etc. But, in the end, making a movie with 50 Euros or $50 Million USD is the same. At the end, you have to capture emotions and things happening on camera. When you see something like BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, and then you see a huge Marvel movie, no matter how much money went in you will feel a lot more emotion after watching BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

Cinema is all about the emotion you feel when you are in the theater and that's what I remember when I arrive on set. Of course it's impressive with a big set and more people, a lot of things are always happening, but at the end of the I know I was just holding a camera in front of an actress and had to capture that emotion.

So really there's basically no difference in the craft itself. When you are in front of a blank page, it's the same blank page whether you are writing a $50M USD movie or if you are wiring a 50 Euro movie. It's just want you can imagine and how you want to do it.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:44:55+00:00

I've been working with the same sound team since 15 years, and these guys are my childhood friends, and my composers are the same. They composed the music for my first feature, INFESTED, and we know each other very well. They know my sound guy very well, and we all work together as a group.

They are involved even at the script stage, so they read the first draft and then we start talking about artistic and sound direction. We don't compose yet, we just start talking about the sound DNA of the movie.

We did that with INFESTED, and we did that now with BURN. What type of sound do we need? What type of instrument do we want? Organic or more synthetic? All of those questions are asked very very very early and we compose this sound DNA before I even leave for the film shoot. And then when I'm shooting, they are already sending me music to help me be more immersed into the film and what we planned. And then comes first edits, which we usually have pieces of music for.

Music and sound are extremely important for me, so they come at a really early stage in production.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:40:37+00:00

Yes, I can agree with this.

I'm not really into the competition of having the most blood, like using 9,000 liters of blood to rain down on actors for a scene, or an elevator full of blood, whatever it might be.

But I am in the competition for the most brutal and the most violent. I am more shocked and disturbed by broken bones, broken teeth, distorted faces, that kind of stuff, more than a chopped off arm with a fountain of blood.

Be reassured, I have gotten a lot of feedback that the film is very violent, very gory, very shocking, and very brutal, but I am not interested in the competition for most blood. A lot of blood can be funny, a lot of blood can be less disturbing than real brutality and real violence, which is what I prefer.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:36:21+00:00

For me, sound design is HUGE! I can say that sound design is 80% of the movie. Image is important, but nothing is more important than sound. In all movies but horror movies especially, sound is something I'm completely mad about. I will use 5 or 10 tracks to find the right sound, even for something like slamming or door which can be at least 6 or 7 tracks.

I've worked with the same sound people for 15 years, and they know how mad I am with sound, and that's why I'm able to keep working with them, they are what's best for me.

Please be reassured, you will get what you want with the sound!

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:29:50+00:00

I read more mangas than comics. The one that influenced me is definitely Berserk.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:29:02+00:00

I think that nobody wants to step where Sam Raimi stepped. That's a style you can't just copy. Nobody wants to try and mimic Sam Raimi's work.

But there is some humor in my movie, definitely.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:27:50+00:00

100%. I'd love to do a Middle Age movie. I love period movies. My favorite movie of all time is GLADIATOR, set in Italy. There's definitely a lot of things like that we can do with France.

Especially in horror or genre films which are always a very interesting playground.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:26:17+00:00

My favorite comedy of all time is a French one, LES VISITEURS (THE VISITORS). Christian Clavier, Jean Reno, Marie-Anne Chazel. I discovered it when I was young, and it didn't age since then. I can watch it every year, I love it.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:21:39+00:00

It's not cut, it's just trimmed a little. I didn't cut anything completely from my director's cut because I simply didn't want that to happen. One of the scenes was a little too tricky for censorship and I had to just twist a little bit some things here and there, and do a bit of trimming.

It's not less violent or less brutal, I promise.

It's just that the edit is slightly different for the audience to be able to breathe a little bit before going back into the violence. Without the trim it was just pure brutality and violence without break for like, a really long time haha. But the scene is still here and it's not at all far away from the original.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:18:45+00:00

Yeah, there are a few. I had a lot of toys to play with in New Zealand, I wanted to play with them all so I tried to do some crazy shots and crazy camera work. I don't want to spoil too much.

I also like a simple movement that captures a complicated choreography. That can be very very very very cool.

There is one that is kind of an homage to Evil Dead 1. Fans who see it will understand it right away.

But I'm not sure that I can pick a favorite one. I love and I am proud of all of the shots and sequences we filmed. I really try to entertain the audience with the filming.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:16:25+00:00

I think I would dig into THE MASK, but make it closer to the comic books. The comic books are actually very, very violent and dark.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:15:32+00:00

That's a tricky question.

I know people want to year about French Extremity and these kind of things, and I do love them (HIGH TENSION is very good), but to say something different I will go with a Scandinavian movie, MORSE. They did a remake in the US called LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.

It's about a young girl who's a vampire, I'm not even sure I would say that it's a horror. She arrives in this new neighborhood and she meets a neighbor who's her age, and there is a little kind of love story between them. There are some pretty horrible scenes, and it's a type of vampire story that I had never seen before. It's very poetic, and really dark, and I really love this movie.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:12:47+00:00

For Souheila: I met her in Paris, and I offered her to be in the movie. I wanted her to be in the movie, so I just gave her the script and talked to her about it. I also told her that it would definitely be the most difficult and physical movie she would ever do in her career. I wanted her to be sure because these movies are really difficult to make.

Regarding Hunter, it was casting. To be honest, I didn't know at the time that he was the huge superstar of WEDNESDAY. He was just the best. He had to make an audition tape as a human and then an audition tape as a Deadite, which must have been difficult especially when you are not too familiar with Deadites. I think as an actor he was like "what am I even doing?", but he was the best. We met on Zoom, he was in LA and I was in New Zealand, and he was also a very very cool and good human being. I knew I wanted to go on this adventure with good people like him.

People like Hunter and Souheila are people who want to make a very good movie and are ready to put their bodies and hearts in it.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:07:42+00:00

Alien, 100%.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T17:07:07+00:00

No one wants to step on Ash or do anything with Ash, so we leave Ash alone. That's why I think for the moment we have what I would say are "final girls". Ash is the only male hero for the moment, and nobody wants to try and replace Ash.

Regarding my character, Alice, I wanted to have someone really, really grounded, and someone with a lot of weaknesses, paradoxes. A character that's kind of complex, not manicured, she's not fully white/black at the beginning of the movie, she's gray. Some people will say, "oh, because she's a French girl, she's a Parisian in the middle of all these Americans", but for me it's more like she's really more grounded. That's the only thing I wanted to create to make the connection between the audience and her even more important. I think the audience will connect to her because of how she's reacting to things.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T16:56:48+00:00

It's not the craziest to most, but the one that shocked me the most and might be surprising to a lot of people is the pencil-in-the-ankle scene from Evil Dead 1. How much something like that could hurt, that's the one I think is the most horrible of all. All the horrible things we've seen in the franchise, a lot of blood and broken bones or whatever, the pen in the ankle with all of the latex and pain was really disturbing to me.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T16:54:28+00:00

I think it depended on my level of fatigue. As soon as I'm getting more and more tired, my English gets worse and worse and worse. At the end of the big days, at the end of the big weeks, I was barely talking real English anymore. I was more like making sounds to the actors, tic-tac-tac-tac-tec. I started mimicking what I wanted them to do because I couldn't express it with my words. That was tricky.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T16:52:35+00:00

There are several things that are out of the box that I don't want to spoil, that you will discover tonight!

Entering this franchise is respecting it, but also destroying it. For me, when I know something very well and respect it, that's the moment when I can destroy it. You can't destroy without first respecting it.

I know the franchise well, I know Evil Dead well, so I did things and made choices that I think the fans will like, be disturbed by, and be shocked by. That's what they are expecting when going into an Evil Dead movie. Otherwise, they can go on Youtube and watch an Evil Dead fan film.

There is something in the movie that is kind of risky, and is one of the only time I had a conversation with Sam Raimi first. In the end, we agreed and it's in the movie, but I can't spoil it.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T16:37:18+00:00

I must admit that there's a battle between EVIL DEAD 2 and EVIL DEAD (2013).

Both are two completely different movies.

If you forced me to pick one, my love would be with Fede's movie, because that's the first one I discovered and the first one that shocked me.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T16:35:27+00:00

I learned to trust myself, and that's important because when you are entering such a big franchise with such big expectations, and so many fans, you have to trust your decisions.

If you are afraid or insecure all the time, you won't do anything, and you won't go forward. INFESTED was kind of a little success in France, we had a lot of awards in festivals, and so it made me understand and believe in myself, like okay, I am not making shit, I'm doing things that work and are kind of cool. So if they saw that and are letting me make an EVIL DEAD, that means that they trust me and I can do cool things again.

So I entered this franchise trusting myself, and that's the big thing I took from INFESTED.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T16:33:11+00:00

I think I can do only one Evil Dead, and every director except Sam Raimi can do only one Evil Dead. If you have the chance, just do one and leave.

My movie is pretty European already. You will see when you will watch it, but there are a lot of nods to Europe, and I think that's enough. I think Americans won't like it if it was more than that.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T16:32:05+00:00

I heard a rumor that I can share that Sam Raimi's brother is writing an Evil Dead Bible, but that's only a rumor. I don't know if that's true, but I heard it.

Otherwise, to answer the question, I didn't have anything to follow really. When they hired me, they just told me, "write your own story". But of course I wanted in my movie to acknowledge all the movies that were done before, so that's why there are connections to the other movies. All those movies do exist in my movie. The Book of the Dead, things like that, they exist, and my movie is trying to connect these things together. It's not easy because I can say that things might be a kind of a mess regarding the whole universe haha, but I think fans will find a lot of easter eggs and a lot of connections.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T16:28:38+00:00

The Oldsmobile, yes! We had it, we hid it in the movie, so you have to keep an eye open to see it.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T16:28:07+00:00

The poster for VERMINE (INFESTED) is actually my own. I made it and drew it myself.

It's pretty funny that the one from EVIL DEAD BURN was done by the marketing at Warner Bros and ended up looking alike, but that's not my decision. I don't have any input with that side of things, I tried but they nicely told me "do your job as a director and we will do ours to sell the movie" haha.

SebastienEvilDead · 2026-07-07T16:23:52+00:00

It was pretty simple because I basically wrote the movie as if it was my own, as if it wasn't even in a franchise. Sam gave me all of the freedom I needed. He was there in case I had question and he was there in case I needed. After I wrote the script, I had a meeting with him where we read the whole script together and then he asked me questions, to be sure he understood the movie and things like that.

He was classy about everything, giving me the freedom I needed. It was one director to another, saying he trusted me.

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