‘Evil Dead Burn’ Was Forced to Trim a Brutal Scene to Avoid NC-17

Brad Miska |

Jun 15, 2026

When it comes to hardcore, brutal horror films, it has often felt like horror fans versus the MPA – formerly the MPAA. The ratings board has long had a reputation for butchering directors’ visions, forcing cuts, and sanitizing what audiences ultimately get to see in theaters. Whether that’s a good thing or not is an entirely separate debate.

After all, there’s an NC-17 rating for a reason. In theory, that rating exists so filmmakers can push boundaries without worrying about younger viewers. An R rating, meanwhile, technically allows anyone to attend as long as they’re accompanied by an adult. So there’s always been this ongoing tug-of-war between filmmakers who want to go as far as possible and a ratings board tasked with deciding where the line is.

That said, I do think the MPA has become noticeably more lenient over the last couple of decades. Gratuitous gore, extreme violence, and outright nastiness seem to have a lot more room to breathe now than they did years ago. Sexual violence remains an area where the board tends to be much stricter, but when it comes to blood-soaked horror, they haven’t been nearly as restrictive as they once were. Honestly, I haven’t found myself complaining about the MPA in years. I barely even think about them anymore. And movies like Terrifier have proven that filmmakers can find success outside the traditional studio system anyway.

Still, the ratings board recently became part of the conversation surrounding one of the biggest horror movies of the past year, Obsession. The original cut of Curry Barker’s breakout film reportedly featured an even more graphic version of its infamous head-smashing sequence. In that scene, Nikki repeatedly slams a character’s head into a steering wheel until she’s reduced to an unrecognizable mess of gore. What’s surprising is that the version audiences saw in theaters was already shockingly brutal. According to Barker, that sequence had to be trimmed down in order to avoid an NC-17 rating. If that’s true, it really makes you wonder just how extreme the original version was.

Apparently, Evil Dead Burn found itself in a very similar situation.

In a recent interview with SFX magazine, director Sébastien Vaniček revealed that there was one sequence in particular that had to be edited in order to secure an R rating. He didn’t identify the scene, but he confirmed that the original version pushed things too far and risked earning the film an NC-17.

“There is a scene that is not R-rated,” Vaničekin said in the latest issue of the mag. “It’s a really, really hard scene. And I have to cut it, unfortunately, so you just won’t experience it as brutally as it is right now because I need to have the R-rated movie. So we are trying to find a good balance.”

That’s not exactly shocking when you consider the recent history of this franchise.

The original Evil Dead films from Sam Raimi were certainly gory, but they often balanced their carnage with slapstick comedy and over-the-top splatstick humor. The modern entries have taken a much harsher approach. Fede Álvarez’s Evil Dead from 2013 remains one of the nastiest mainstream horror movies ever released by a major studio. That film is a relentless barrage of mutilation, bodily destruction, and misery, and it’s still kind of amazing that it managed to walk away with an R rating after reportedly requiring cuts from an initial NC-17 classification.

Then came Evil Dead Rise, which somehow found room for moments like the infamous cheese grater scene. Horror fans spent months imagining the worst possible use for a kitchen cheese grater, and somehow the movie still found a way to make the final result uncomfortable. Even that film only required minor trims to satisfy the ratings board, which says a lot about how much more tolerant the MPA has become when it comes to graphic horror violence.

Now it sounds like Evil Dead Burn may be pushing things even further.

If the trailers are any indication, Evil Dead Burn looks poised to continue the vicious streak established by Evil Dead (2013) and Evil Dead Rise.

And in an era where unrated cuts, extended editions, and director’s cuts regularly find their way onto physical media and streaming services, there’s always the possibility that whatever footage was removed eventually sees the light of day. Horror fans are nothing if not persistent when it comes to demanding the most extreme version of a movie.

We’ll find out just how far Evil Dead Burn goes when it hits theaters this July.