Forget 'Evil Dead Burn,' This Bloody Thriller Is the Perfect Replacement

Published Oct 14, 2026, 7:09 AM EDT

Erik Hawkins is an award-winning writer and editor who's been obsessed with cinema since he was old enough to hold Roger Ebert's Video Home Companion in his hands. He lives in NYC, where he rabidly watches everything from the newest releases to the more odd and obscure, and regularly shares his thoughts on Letterboxd. From ghost-writing fiction and webisodes in South America to local news, trial coverage, and politics in NYC, he's rarely put down his laptop over the past 15 years.

The success of Evil Dead Burn at the box office and on streaming, where it's currently sitting atop HBO Max's most-watched movies list, means that a new generation of horror fans may be taking an interest in the early-aughts "New French Extremity" cinema movement. While Evil Dead Burn is arguably a failure as a part of the largely goofy franchise, it did successfully gross out thousands of viewers with its over-the-top, focus-on-the-pain approach to violence and gore. And anyone intrigued by the nasty touch that director Sébastien Vaniček brought to the series would do well to check out the film that may have first exploded the grisly French movement on US soil: the unimpeachable thriller Inside.

A harrowing mixture of suspenseful Hitchcockian/De Palma-ian set pieces and wet, graphic gore, Inside is the key that unlocks the appeal of Evil Dead Burns and several more of the lean and mean horror films that have come in its wake. While a number of French horror films, like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired Nazi shocker Frontier(s), also became DVD hits for viewers who were looking for something a little less tame than the usual genre fare, Inside is still a monolithic piece of gory suspense film-making. Luckily for new fans, it's streaming free — and uncut — on Tubi.

What Is 'Inside' About?

Opening on a horrific car accident that leaves protagonist Sarah a widow, Inside picks up several months later, on Christmas Eve, as the grieving woman prepares to give birth at any moment. That's when she receives a visit from one of the most terrifying horror villains of all time: Beatrice Dalle's "La Femme." Dalle's performance has been rightly cited as an all-timer by horror fans, as she nails the inhuman menace of someone who's lost all will to live, and to anything else other than claiming what she believes is hers. In this case, that's Sarah's baby. Generally bathed in shadow, sometimes to surreal effect, La Femme is an elementally terrifying force that cements herself even deeper in viewers' minds after the film's devastating climax.

After La Femme's first knock at the door, Inside escalates moment-to-moment into a blood-bathed, incredibly desperate and uncomfortable struggle between the two women. Directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo cannily resist the urge to turn Sarah into a helpless, fleeing victim, while at the same time making the agony she goes through intensely felt. Sarah fights with everything she has and endures shock after horrifying shock as the night unfolds, but all throughout, hope remains she'll make it out alive — much like the grisly endurance test that Souheila Yacoub's hero fights through in Evil Dead Burn.

'Inside' Is a Killer Entry Point to the New French Extremity Movement

Inside was a critical hit in the US, per Rotten Tomatoes, earning accolades for its uncompromising approach to violence and pure craft. The film's relentless, take-no-prisoners approach showed the so-called "torture porn" movement in American post-9/11 cinema like Saw and Hostel to be relatively tame, and helped kick off an interest in the New French Extremity movement. Vaniček took a similar approach with Evil Dead Burn, perfectly encapsulated in the film's eardrum scene, focusing on the grueling pain of every wound that's inflicted rather than pure splatter-by-volume.

But Inside still can shock and thrill modern horror viewers, as it tackles one of the few remaining taboos of horror cinema: violence against a pregnant woman. Remarkably, though, if you've got the stomach for it, the film remains "fun" to an extent. Maury and Bustillo have remarkable command of space and pacing that makes Inside into a particularly grisly, almost John Carpenter-style siege thriller. And by the final moments of the film, no matter how vile the visuals, the audience is locked in and rooting for Sarah to stab and slash her way to freedom.

Evil Dead Burns fans who are looking for even bloodier thrills in the same register owe it to themselves to experience the film thast introduced the US to New French Extremity, as it's currently streaming in its full, gory glory on Tubi.

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  Alysson Paradis

  Sarah Scarangelo

• Nathalie Roussel

  Louise Scarangelo

• François-Régis Marchasson

  Jean-Pierre Montalban

• Jean-Baptiste Tabourin

  Matthieu