Are our kids going to be okay at Doctor Strange? It was described as a horror movie.
A friend messaged me asking if I thought Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was family-friendly. As a parent of a toddler myself, I am surprised at how much Sam Raimi deviated from the norm. It was a concerned friend who got me thinking about the reality of a parent bringing their child with them to a movie.
Let's manage expectations before we start. This isn't a dump of information. I will share some details here and there, but nothing that will ruin plot points, casting surprises, or blockbuster moments. That is not what we do here.
This is just an information system. Every parent-child dynamic is different. I would not want to tell another mom or dad how to manage their family. I want to make sure you have the knowledge you need to make an informed decision so your small ones can have a rest.
Common Sense Media has a review of the questionable details that include crowd-sourced insights from other moviegoers and a formal content rating system. Every content-loving parent should visit that website.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness director Sam Raimi may be best known to fans of the Spider-Man movies as the man behind the Tobey Maguire trilogy. Some of Raimi's most well-known past work has gone to darker places, as any fan of Hollywood's greatest cult favorites will tell you.
The horror genre is what inspired The Evil Dead (1981) and its two sequels, Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992). The whole trilogy is full of blood and guts and brutal acts of violence.
The Evil Dead series is just one of many works by Raimi. The three movies are proof of concept for the signature visual style that would define much of what followed from the filmmaker. Raimi fills his films with frightening imagery. He fills the tension build-up into a fear moment with excitement and ass-kicking metal vibes. This one is not a good fit for the way of doing things.
The level of violence in Doctor Strange sequel is way up from the first one. It is definitely not blood-soaked but it is not bloodless.
More than a few people die in this movie, and not in the way that the Battle of New York is in the movie, where it is all happening in an assumed way off screen. Multiple pivotal characters are killed in graphic fashion in Multiverse. There is a lot of gunplay and violence, including an early close-up of a nasty-looking leg wound. I would be most concerned with the death visuals.
A close-up shot of a character's neck snapped at one point. Another death, which keeps the camera at a distance, shows a person being ripped apart in a meat grinder. It is an all-CGI moment that is completely devoid of blood, but it makes for an upsetting visual.
This isn't a hint that Wong is toast. But look! Blood! Credit: Marvel Studios
The most disturbing onscreen death shows us a character's face in an extreme close-up as something seems to explode inside their skull. The exploding head moment in Scanners is nothing like this. The kind of visual that sticks with you is the up- close look at a person's head suddenly and unnaturally expanding in a very wrong direction.
There are a number of bigger fight scenes that cut to gruesome deaths more than once. There is no attempt to hide the damage. People are smashed and crushed by large groups of people. A character is thrown across a room with their head and neck hitting the ground. A character is immolated by fire, with a look at their charred corpse in the aftermath.
Even with the more disturbing imagery having a somewhat sanitized feel, it is all there. Computer generated effects only clean up when they capture graphic death sequences.
Multiverse of Madness isn't a work of pure horror and not something I would describe as "scary", but there are moments and visuals that may not agree with all kids. There is a healthy amount of gore that is not the immediate result of onscreen violence and more than one jump scare.
There is no way to tell you about the jump scares. Depending on the viewer, I counted at least three or four. The Raimi factor makes these startling moments work in a thrilling way, but they are built using the language of horror films. Prepare for the possibility of a freaked out kid jumping into your lap.
The imagery is even worse. Multiple trailers have featured brief looks at a character that is best described asZombie Strange, but his face is ashen, riddled with open wounds, and partially decayed, like that of a less-than.
Setting aside the particulars of who that is and what role they play in the story, the so-called Zombie Strange gets enough screen time for everyone to soak in the extent of the damage to his face and body. It is rough. Chunks of skin and muscle are missing from his lower jaw and one cheek, and extreme close-ups make it impossible to look away.
It is fair to say that Zombie Strange is not a creature of pure horror because Raimi does some unexpected things with the character. His death visage is hard to see.
At one point in the movie, one of the major threats is able to find another character in the family home. The sequence is played as a tension-builder with everyday objects, such as a happy photo of the homeowner, seemingly coming to life. In an earlier moment, we see that same villain contort their body as they emerge from an unlikely object in a way similar to the girl from the well in The Ring.
These are the main examples that I laid out for the parent who initially asked for advice. The kids did well and the movie did not cause any nightmares. All parents will tell you that every kid is wired differently. Is Doctor Strange a horror movie? Definitely not. It is a huge step away from the typical all-ages fare of the MCU.
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