A young woman (Souheila Yacoub) battles her demonically possessed in-laws in this Evil Dead sequel they should have called Deady or Not.

If Evil Dead Burn can be summed up in a single word it is grey, which is ironic for a film without Ash. The colouring is grey, the characters are grey, and for some reason they live in a dilapidated grey house covered in mould. Coincidentally these people are afflicted by the same illness as Anastasia from 50 Shades of Grey that makes them incapable of reading in their heads, prompting them to read aloud from the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead that happens to be in their possession because their grandfather was a member of something called the Circle of the Wise Men. Ash would have something to say about that. This film does not.

Sébastien Vaniček’s tedious sequel continues the misery-pornification of Sam Raimi’s trilogy, which got away with having no logic or plot by virtue of being fun, colourful comedies; a fact that is obvious to everyone apart from the people now in charge of making Evil Dead movies. There is nothing fun or comedic in this 1 hour and 50 minute slog, unless you happen to find domestic violence, awful people arguing, or dogs being killed particularly hilarious. It does try to wring cringe comedy from some of the gore and, that old classic, an elderly woman with dementia, but the only laughs come from actors attempting to say things like this with a straight face: “He spent more time with the Circle of the Wise Men than us.”

In the absence of Bruce Campbell’s Ash (or any characters whatsoever), the Deadites have to go round mutilating themselves, which has no impact as a viewer because they are famously already dead (the clue is in the name). The movie also never decides what does and does not turn someone into a Deadite, whether they are unstoppable or easily defeated by some glass to the eye, or why one of them is a robot. Again this doesn’t matter in a slapstick comedy flick, but when the tone is too grim to incorporate a second colour, there is nothing to distract us.

And not content to only piss on its own franchise’s history, the sixth instalment also steals the cigarette-smoking outsider at war with her in-laws idea from Ready or Not – except rather than feminist class-war commentary, the family only seem to resent the pink-haired heroine for ruining their carefully curated grey aesthetic. But for all its pretence at family satire and exploitation of domestic abuse, Evil Dead Burn is nothing more than the bonfire of a legacy.