Sam Raimi had entered my head. I walked slowly on the opposite side of the street from my normal route and did not look at the house for more than two seconds. Raimi came back to horror just in time to give me a good old freakout, and I loved every second of it.
I have warned you that I need to see an as-early-as-possible release for this film. I'm going to give a bit of a primer on the hallmarks of Raimi's work in Multiverse of Madness. I was surprised and excited to see Raimi's hand in the film. The first few minutes of the movie have America Chavez running across an interdimensional junction in the multiverse, pursued by a mummy/zombie spirit with way too many arms, while aided by a version of Doctor Strange with a ponytail. There were also some truly amazing smashes, like the zombie films that made Raimi's name in the early 80's and 90's.
A smash zoom is where the camera quickly zooms in on a subject and then cuts away, sometimes with extra camera shake or a lens change hidden in a cut between the start of the zoom and the end. The Quick and the Dead are some truly excellent examples.
Strange wakes up, we know and tolerate him. The cinematography here is classic Raimi, spinning slowly as it pulls back, turns over to the side, watching Strange as he comes to realization that he is woken up before the camera settles again. The camerawork shows off Strange's mental state. We had it multiple times in the first five minutes, and I was ready for more.
I muttered to myself in the back of the theater.
Raimi made his directorial mark with 1981's The Evil Dead, a wild creature feature that was part isolated cabin slasher and part zombie escape film. It established Raimi as a gore-happy, blood-and-guts kind of horror director, and we got to see some of the hallmarks of Raimi's oeuvre in this film. There were evil books, monster POV shots, undead creatures, and even a kind of magic that binding a person to an evil force.
All of these motifs are present in Multiverse of Madness. There is a scene in the first big Raimi film that recalls the horror of universe 616 when the Scarlet Witch possesses the body of the Wanda Maximoff. She magics off Black Bolt's (Anson Mount) mouth so that when he tries to speak his head explodes with a horrible gushing sound that made everyone in the theater gasp. The jump scare that made me start my seat was caused by puppet-Wanda on a zombie walk through the under-river tunnels of the compound. The low-budget gore of The Evil Dead and the low-budget gore of Evil Dead II are what these scenes are reminiscent of.
Raimi's next big hit was 1987's "Evil Dead II", which was a better-funded and more polished remake of The Evil Dead, since studios hate risk. Between the two films, he had some crazy ideas, but the movie that stands out is Evil Dead II.
The Multiverse of Madness has many of the same motifs as the Evil Dead II, such as an actual zombie, a hand bursting out of the ground, a woman who used to be considered beautiful turning into a vengeful creature, and evil moving through reflections. It was fun to pick up on the similarities between the two films, and I felt like there might have been a nod to the Marvel franchise, but Raimi decided not to.
What did Raimi do with the ideas that were cut from Evil Dead II? He threw them into the Army of Darkness. The 1990 Darkman was his first superhero film and it wasn't much fun. A man who gets sucked into the past and is prophesied to seal away an evil forever, but mucks it up by mispronouncing a magic spell is the subject of Army of Darkness. He has to fight his way out of the past by using anachronistic weapons.
If you've watched Army of Darkness, you'll know that Raimi brings a good sense of humor to his work, with sarcastic, fish-out-of-water absurdity, quick-talking wise guys who are definitely chosen-one. The main hero of the film is perfectly matched by Strange's too-clever-by-far dialogue. Strange is known for his absurdist magic and Army of Darkness also has evil books, a bathit insane witch, fourth wall breaking, and evil spirits.
I get a little meta with it here. Bruce Campbell plays the character of Ash Williams in The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness, and in every single one of his roles he commits to the bit. In Multiverse of Madness, we see different Doctors Strange in different universes, some more evil than others, but all capable of understanding the consequences of their decisions. Raimi's take on the multiversal bodies feels like a wink towards his work with the character of Ash and Campbell.
Even though I was convinced by the first scene that this was a Raimi spectacular, the post-credit scene with Campbell was the cherry on top of a gory and strange sundae. The Pizza Poppa hitting himself over and over is a direct reference to the movie Evil Dead II where Ash has to cut off his hand with a chainsaw to get rid of his possessed hand.
Drag Me To Hell was a horror film by Raimi and it got a nod. In Drag Me To Hell, there is a scene where he reaches out to a woman who is trapped in her own mind. It gets even weirder when the red fog floods the room and out of it comes the Witch, face contorted, and she grabs his head with clawed hands. A witch out of hell can murder a psychic in her own mind.
Is Multiverse of Madness a good film? The villain's motivation is a half-baked idea without a lot of emotional thrust, no matter how much b-roll you have.
If you're watching Multiverse of Madness because you're excited to see Sam Raimi work again, then this is a great film. It is excellent. It is a Raimi bone-breaking, sound-design-bursting, wince-in-your-seat smash. Wanda has monster POVs as she tries to comfort her kids and as she tries to approach her alternate self. There are more crossfades in this film than in the entire MCU, and I was living for every one of them. I have already mentioned the cinematography and characters looking directly at the audience, as well as a number of motifs that occur in a lot of his films.
What Raimi does is show that you can have an authorial style and still make a movie. The auteurship in those films pales in comparison to the brain-bursting horror that Raimi brings to the table. Sam Raimi fans will not be disappointed with the usual fatigue that has set in around the stagnation of a franchise that spans 10 years, 20 films, and at least 10 TV series. If you want to forget everything you know about the film, watch it. It is more enjoyable that way.
The directorial ownership that Raimi holds within many of these scenes is incredible, and is reminiscent of the horror films where Raimi first found success. Multiverse of Madness stands out because of its broad-stroke approach to plot and character, how of the plot and the style of Raimi's direction. There is a strange dichotomy between Raimi's heightened over-the-top horror instincts and the off-the-wall magic he is given to play with that allows him to create pulpy, eyeball-popping visuals and stellar moments. As Raimi pushes the boundaries of taste and comfort, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness proves, once and for all, that auteurs can create something that is representational of their own work, and not fully beholden to the budget.
Doctor Strange is in theaters today.
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