it's really interesting to me that it seems like evil dead burn picks up a thread from the first evil dead movie with ash's inaction for most of the movie reflected in joseph's inaction. it's the main character arc of the original movie and in following with typical "final girl" character conventions (described in carol clover's her body, himself in men, women, and chainsaws re: gender in slasher movies) for the surviving character to go from passive to active, feminine to masculine so to speak, so ash's character development is about him like stepping up and "becoming a man" basically (which, again, per clover, is part of what the final girl trope is about as well). but he's not able or willing to step up until it's just himself and scott left, he doesn't listen to his sister's warnings and he's not able to protect his girlfriend. okay and don't come after me for this opinion i know this is like a cult classic movie with a lot of fans, but it's also a movie that's very entrenched in the male pov where the pain that befalls the female characters serves to further the development of the male characters, and this has just never sat right with me but like it's a product of its time or whatever. so i feel like evil dead burn is a sort of updated take on these writing choices. this same type of inaction is problematized through joseph, who owns a gun to feel badass but can't use it when he needs it to save his girlfriend. on one hand, we can sympathize that he doesn't want to shoot his own father and has to make a split second decision. on the other hand, we see that he is complicit in the patriarchal violence that is normalized in his family and repeatedly won't intervene on behalf of the women impacted, like he does nothing to intervene when he knew that his brother was abusing alice. then, as his girlfriend points out as a deadite, it's easier for him to kill her to save himself than it is for him to kill his father to save both of them. and the moment where he actually kills her is framed as being extremely disturbing to his mother and alice as well as himself, not just because of the gore but also because it's like such an over-the-top explosively violent moment that is much more involved than just pulling the trigger of a gun. it's the moment where, like ash in the original movie, he is finally able to act, and maybe it's necessary in that moment, but there's no catharsis or solution in this action. also, joseph is the character most aligned with his grandfather, who abandoned the family in the name of protecting them when all he did was burden his daughter with taking on the sole caretaker role of the family and leave them vulnerable to harm. i feel like the commentary here is 1) inaction also contributes to the cycle of violence, and 2) in traditional patriarchal family structures, men do not fulfill their alleged roles as protectors of their families when it doesn't serve them. so like joseph and his grandfather are foils to will and his father, who directly enact violence within the family. you can fail your family by hurting them or you can fail your family by failing to protect them from harm. and men have more allegiance to the other men in their family than they do to the women in their family. okay and i don't totally think it's so black and white in the movie, i think joseph is still a multifaceted character that the audience can feel aligned with, and by the end of the movie, he is able to step up to try to keep alice safe and give her the best chance possible for her to find the knife. which is maybe a modified version of ash in the original movie stepping up to save himself. idk these are my thoughts rn i feel like i want to watch the movie again to clarify some of these ideas for myself but i'm thinking about it. well also what do we think about joseph wearing blue (ash's color) until halfway through the movie after he kills his girlfriend as a deadite (his ash-like character arc). am i reading too much into it and the curtains sweatshirt is just blue or what
