Sam Raimi’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Fusion of some of the best of Raimi’s work from both his horror and superhero backlog, this won’t convince the uninitiated but will delight existing fans despite being under the shadow of “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Having been a fan of the mystical horror-superhero crossover of Doctor Strange as a kid, what appealed to me was the uncanny and surreal nature of the stories. Of all the films in which we’ve seen Benedict Cumberbatch don the cloak, this comes closest to those stories as Raimi embraces the horror element though the visuals in the film vary wildly across its runtime.

Telling the story of America Chavez(impressively played by Xochitl Gomez) who has an uncontrolled ability to open portals between dimensions in the multiverse whenever she feels intense fear, it does benefit from having seen the many hours of back story for Doctor Strange as well as the third key character, Wanda Maximoff(Elizabeth Olsen). All three of these performances are very good and I would have liked to have seen more of them, but Raimi does a pretty good job of balancing the development of these characters amid a universe-hopping, action-packed script from Rick & Morty scribe Michael Waldron.

In some ways, I think this may have worked better as a television miniseries(it does feel like the true finale to Wandavision) with more time to spend on the characters, but Raimi does make a film that fits nicely into his catalogue fusing some of the best from his previous work in horror and superhero films. It feels very much like a Sam Raimi film complete with a cameo from Bruce Campbell.

The fight sequences are easy to follow and well choreographed though the effects aren’t as convincing as equivalents in Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy films more than a decade ago. Also, the tone of the visuals isn’t consistent which is a problem in quite a few of the Marvel films.

As a whole, it’s something of a mixed bag though entertaining. It’s a notch above other Marvel films and though it tries to stray away from some of the comic book wrestling/soap opera, it never quite breaks free and it does best when leaning into the character work and horror which is what should be at the heart of a good Doctor Strange story.