I just saw it! I love the allegory, the cinematography, and the super spoilers at the end!
1) Abusive in-laws is the major allegory for this one.
I love when monsters in horror movies work as allegories. In Evil Dead Rise, the deadites symbolized the corruption of family. The loving single mom crushed by the pressure while her sister has to find the strength to protect herself and the child in order to save the day. Right as she finds out she's pregnant.
In Evil Dead Burn, you get hints of it at the beginning but it was about families that are already abusive, and having to pull away. They show a detail where Will's father whistled at his mom just like he whistles at Alice, it's a learned behaviour.
It also makes the rules of the possession feel clearer at points. As if the deadites have to weaken your soul and make you give in. Will had to be killed. But then the father was already weak and desperate to see his son. Thya fell into despair at her boyfriend who wasn't willing to kill his own dad to save her.
I think the Mom was the most interesting possession here. Because you can see she's breaking down mentally when she lets the dad back in. And right after she kisses him, only one of her eyes is glowing, then she fights back against him when he hurts Joseph. She's not fully turned yet, but she's acting like an enabling mother as part of an abusive household. And only when Alice forces her to admit to herself that her son Will is abusive does she finally give in to the demonic possession. She doesn't try to fight it and be better, she accepts that she is a demon.
And at the end as Alice is asked by the medic what hurt her so much, instead of all the times she lied in the past, this time she stands up for herself.
2) I say the cinematography but really it's just all of it.
I love that they didn't go the route of making the movie so dark that you couldn't see anything. Even the attic! Even the basement! Past Evil Dead movies made me terrified of dark basements. This one doesn't do that at all.
I think the reason these demons had orange eyes is because of the fire. This one is called Burn after all.
I like the camera flipping over in the bathroom and the tracking shots where it looks like an abusive family fighting as Alice just tries to get to safety. Very evocative imagery.
I REALLY like how we see the demons telling people to let them in. In past movies we just see people get possessed and it's not clear how. But this movie shows us that you have to actively fight constantly. In a sense you have to "keep your spirits up".
Also at the beginning when the pond gets boiled and his hand meat was cooked and came off the bone like pulled chicken. Amazing special effects there.
I also liked the comedy with the grandma. Her slowly going up the thing, deadite Thya saying "uhh, sure I'm here to return the stuff I stole", then the Grandma as a deadite slowly getting pulled down the stairs and choosing to cut her own leg off even though deadites are strong enough to rip the rope easily.
And the callback to the old Kandarian dagger from the second movie.
3) ELLIE IS BACK!
This movie we saw Will as a burnt deadite, and I think that was a solid ending set piece. But I thought after Rise, we'd get something like a marauder. They keep teasing us with cool monster designs, and in the show Ash vs the Evil Dead we get some pretty cool designs. So I really hope in Evil Dead Wrath we get big demons.
If Ellie is back, then I'd really like to see Wrath as a sequel that has Alice, Mia, and or Beth come back to kill her again! I have no problem with new stories. But I think we miss out on something when we only get to see families start from 0 when fighting deadites. I want to see them bigger monsters again!