Evil Dead Burn Required One Cut To Avoid An NC-17 Rating [Exclusive]

If you haven't noticed, we're currently living in a horror movie renaissance period. Curry Barker's "Obsession" continues to break box office records at an astounding rate, while films like "Sinners" and "Weapons" win Academy Awards and stuff like "Backrooms" becomes a household name. Things are so prosperous for horror cinema that it's almost easy to forget it wasn't all that long ago that the genre was considered wholly disreputable. During those more turbulent times for the studio horror film, directors seemed to be locked in constant battle with the Motion Picture Association over ratings. While movies could be released unrated, most studios insisted on an R rating for their releases, resulting in a lot of footage being left on the cutting room floor.

In the intervening years, the MPA has become much more lenient with regard to horror movies, understanding that there's no need to be so harsh on them. However, that doesn't mean they'll let just anything slip by with an R, as director Sébastien Vaniček discovered while in post-production on "Evil Dead Burn." The film is the latest in the "Evil Dead" franchise, which has always been a delightfully brutal and mean-spirited horror series. The franchise is a great example of changing censorship standards on its own: After "The Evil Dead" and "Evil Dead II" were released unrated, the subsequent films have enjoyed studio distribution with an R rating while sacrificing little of the series' trademark gore and brutality. "Burn" is shockingly nasty for an R-rated feature, which is why it's not surprising that an earlier cut nearly received an NC-17. I had the opportunity to speak to Vaniček recently, and he revealed that the amount of material he had to cut from the film to get an R was relegated to just one single scene.

MPA ratings aren't an exact science. Sometimes, a movie's rating is really about the general vibe of the whole film more than anything specific. "Evil Dead Burn" is a movie that has a surprising amount of fun in it despite its grim, punishing nature, helping it obtain an R rating in the end. As Sébastien Vaniček explained to me, the difference between the released cut and the initial version involved one particular scene which had a vibe was just a little too harsh for the MPA and for test audiences:

"There was a particular scene where I had to trim a little bit. The scene is still here. The scene is still intense and pretty brutal. But yeah, my version was, I would say, it's not more brutal, but it's colder. It's more raw. So that was more difficult for an audience to bear that and to breathe a little bit. 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."

You may have noticed in his response that Vaniček was careful not to stipulate which scene was the colder, more raw one in need of a trim. Watching "Evil Dead Burn" doesn't help narrow it down much, as there are numerous scenes that could potentially have gone beyond the pale. Still, as we learned recently with "Obsession," the difference between an unrated and R-rated version may only have had to do with mere seconds — or even frames — of footage. Prior rated "Evil Dead" films have had unrated releases on physical media before, so perhaps an unrated "Evil Dead Burn" may be in our future to help quench our curiosity, not to mention bloodlust.

"Evil Dead Burn" is in theaters now.