Every Sam Raimi movie, ranked from worst to best

In the first of several baseball puns, an aw-shucks drama about the nostalgic power of America’s pastime seems like a home run for Sam Raimi, who’s always had a soft spot for Ozzie And Harriet-style Americana. Unfortunately, For Love Of The Game is his most anonymous and least compelling outing to date. Kevin Costner, who more or less feels like the auteur here, plays Billy Chapel, the ideal American baseball star, who considers retirement as he stares down the last game of his worst season. Unaware that he’s pitching a perfect game because he’s too busy reminiscing, Chapel reflects on his life on the mound to stultifying ends.For Love Of The Game probably qualifies as the biggest curveball of Raimi’s career, and the only time you’ll hear “I’m sorry about what I said that day at the condo” in one of his pictures. The director more likely relates to Chapel dipping his white bread in milk, because people only drink milk in Raimi’s universe. Still, Raimi has fun with the sentient hotdogs that populate his pre-9/11 New York and makes a meal of the pitching, but there’s no excitement in the game. It does nail baseball’s glacial pace, for better or worse.

It’s a shame that after and , a Johnny Depp type was required by law to lead movies where a creep wears a top hat. And heavy is the head who wears that stupid hat. Oz The Great And Powerful struggles to conjure any magic or excitement in its 3-D worlds, not because it’s not lovingly crafted, but because its star seems so disinterested. Franco never finds his way, trading Depp’s creepiness for a detached version of . In hindsight, The Wizard could’ve been a great role for Bruce Campbell.Raimi, who used to be the king of the Irish exit, ending his movies ahead of the 100-minute mark, overstays his welcome with this pseudo-remake of Army Of Darkness. Like Peter Jackson’s , Oz’s reverence for the original is a hindrance, begging the audience to wonder why we’re watching this one at all. And why this one is so much longer. The sincerity Raimi brings to special effects-heavy fantasy movies makes him the right guy for the job. It’s a shame that the end result turned out so wrong.

From scene to scene, Spider-Man 3 is a perfectly fine conclusion to Raimi’s trilogy. It’s when you put it all together that things fall apart. After defeating Doc Ock and hooking up with Mary Jane (series MVP Kirsten Dunst), Peter (Tobey Maguire) has become cocky and emotionally distant from those around him. Plus, there’s a Sandman (a forgotten Thomas Hayden Church). Plus, there’s a new girl in his life, Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas-Howard). Plus, Harry (James Franco) has amnesia after his first fight as the new Green Goblin, and the pie is so good. Plus, a mysterious black ooze, the symbiote, has found its way to Earth and attached itself to Peter. There’s a whole lot of movie in Spider-Man 3, and it’s padded out by weightless action that encourages glances at the old Timex, rather than thrills, spills, and chills. Like , Spider-Man 3 has the stink of obligation, where coincidence, convenience, and toy sales drive the plot. Cutting just one of the many plot threads would probably improve the movie by 30%, but there’s a low ceiling on any Spider-Man adventure where Peter Parker clocks Mary Jane in the face. Just what every child wants to see: Spider-Man, domestic abuser.

Crimewave is too good for its own good. It has the kitchen-sink chaos of Gremlins 2, but with less of Joe Dante’s know-how and absolutely none of the budget. The first of two official collaborations between Raimi and the , Crimewave is a rough draft made public. Produced in a rush and cut to ribbons by the studio, Crimewave has several jaw-dropping sequences, particularly a tour through an ACME-esque security company and an expertly staged car chase, tucked into its nonsensical plot. Hapless nerd Victor Ajax (Reed Birney) witnesses the murder of his boss and becomes the target for two hitmen exterminators (Paul L. Smith and Brion James), who “kill all sizes” and are dead ringers for ’s weasels. The Coens and Raimi would figure out to make this work almost immediately after Crimewave was in the can. The manic camera angles and perverse meanness arrive fully formed in Evil Dead II and Raising Arizona. Crimewave’s living-cartoon slapstick energy looks like many movies of the era, including and , but doesn’t have the structure. Nevertheless, this rare misfire from Raimi is an entertaining and unique movie that deserves more love (and attention) than it has received.

It’s a minor miracle that Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness is unmistakably a Sam Raimi movie. His ability to fit his distinctive visual flair and thematic interests into one of these things and still make it one of the more entertaining and fast-paced entries in the massive, all-consuming MCU movie series proves other directors could maybe do the same. That its plot makes absolutely no sense outside the context of the already difficult to manage Marvel Cinematic Universe should also come as no surprise. And it’s on story terms that Raimi comes up short, which is understandable given that he said . In what feels like a first for the MCU, color and movement greet the viewer into a wildly inventive world in which Doctor Strange (a still bland Benedict Cumberbatch) must return a magic library book to hell. But while the story has almost zero emotional resonance, Raimi’s confident camera keeps things moving while taking contractually obligated breathers to fill in the plot with interminable exposition. It’s great to see him working again, but Raimi always works better with simple human drama to ground and guide his camera. Like Spider-Man 3, the more elements that litter his work, the more difficult it becomes to connect with his characters. At least he got to throw in a couple zombies and a fantastically, horrific moment where he turns [REDACTED] into a pile of pool noodles.

It’s depressing watching true-blue American originals like Sam Raimi cosplay as journeymen. Raimi’s Southern Gothic The Gift has a hard edge, but too often feels like a warmed-over supernatural thriller rocketed into production in the wake of . Surviving in the Georgia town of Brixton, fortune-telling widow Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) investigates the murder of local heiress Jessica King (Katie Holmes), the fiancé of good guy about town Wayne Collins (Greg Kinnear), whose demise she foretold. The Gift was made for Saturday afternoon airings on TNT. It doesn’t really pop as you’re watching it, but elements of it linger after the credits roll. With an ace cast doing their most understated Southern accents (including a downright terrifying Keanu Reeves), the movie is never quite sure how seriously to take the material. And the script by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson is grave, featuring graphic and occasionally exploitative sojourns into domestic abuse and child molestation. The movie works best when its cast locks into the very real horrors of domestic abuse and an indifferent legal system. But whenever the script diverges too far into the paranormal the mystery dissipates and the film’s tidy, predictable ending betrays the reality the film establishes.

Army Of Darkness’ ranking has less to do with its overall quality and more about how many other good-ass movies Sam Raimi has made. Stupid Sam Raimi and his habit of making great films. Army Of Darkness unequivocally rules. The Ray Harryhausen-inspired effects, Campbell’s mythic performance as three different Ashes, and the heightening of the Evil Dead mythos charm and excite in just the right ways. Picking up right after Evil Dead II, Army Of Darkness sends Ash back in time to fight the “Medieval Dead,” as the film was originally titled, and search for the Book of the Dead that can send him home.That said, the calibration between self-aware B-movie and gonzo comic book horror is off by a hair, favoring the laughs and derring-do over the scares. Not that it’s not appreciated. Campbell commits to every joke, sneer, and grunt, no matter how many Three Stooges gags a battalion of skeletons pull. While Evil Dead II stays in that sweet spot for the entirety of its runtime, it’s a little more intermittent here. Still, we’re loyal S-Mart customers and wouldn’t be surprised if this jumped a few spots on our next rewatch.

Sam Raimi’s first major studio movie is a low-key banger that tapped into the 1990s pulp explosion that begat and , but with more firepower and tonal control. The director’s supercharged frame makes room for Liam Neeson as Dr. Peyton Westlake, a scientist developing artificial skin for burn victims. When his D.A. girlfriend (Frances McDormand) uncovers an incriminating memo, a group of gangsters dumps Westlake into toxic ooze, granting him Hulk-like strength and making him imperviousness to pain. Using the artificial skin technology to make near-perfect masks, Westlake poses as the gangsters that ruined his life and takes them out one by one.Somewhere between a high-budget and a low-budget , Darkman is an action movie by way of the Universal monsters. But above all, it’s a character study. Zooming into Neeson’s right eye and zooming out the left, Raimi sweeps us into the atomic twister of Westlake’s mind. Raimi never shakes his worldview and delivers a Frankenstein-inspired superhero movie that’s about maintaining your dignity after personal and financial ruin. Even in this early form, Raimi knows to ground the fantastical in real emotion.

When Spider-Man thwip’d into theaters, there had never been a Spider-Man movie before—at least on the big screen. Imagine that. And the fact that Sony was giving the reins of the first Spider-Man movie to the Evil Dead guy felt like a genuine coup. Why, it’s like giving to the guy! The weirdest thing about Spider-Man is how simple it is. Each scene has clear stakes and a linear progression that carries the story forward. In the first scene, babe-in-the-woods Peter Parker (Maguire) gets bitten by a radioactive spider, and well, you know the deal. Free from the constraints of other superheroes and multiverses, Spider-Man can be about Peter Parker and how hard it is to be a teenager.For as influential as this movie was, the Raimi touch, that saccharine wholesomeness counterbalanced with his impish mean-streak, cannot be replicated so easily. The overwhelming sincerity of Peter, Aunt May, and Uncle Ben (Rosemary Harris and Cliff Robertson) are at odds with the quippy superhero movies of today and the black leather of the early 2000s. Raimi turns his frame into Steve Ditko panels with simple, direct Stan Lee dialogue that would fit neatly in a speech bubble. By leaning into Silver Age of Marvel, 20 years later, Spider-Man feels timeless.

The first 15 minutes of The Quick And The Dead are among the best of Raimi’s career. He rattles off characters and exposition without skimping on the Dutch angles and cranked-up zooms. It’s otherworldly, like he conjured it out of the sacrificial offerings of and Bugs Bunny Rides Again, beating the Coens to by about two decades. The Quick And The Dead rarely lets up from there. Sharon Stone’s Lady With No Name rolls into the town of Redemption, known for its quick-draw contest, gunning for dastardly Sheriff John Herod (Gene Hackman). The action plays out across the tournament, as The Lady, a gun-slinger prodigy called The Kid (Leonardo DiCaprio), and an outlaw-turned-preacher named Cort (Russell Crowe) aim to free the town of Herod, or die trying.Raimi doesn’t let his budget or his cast go to waste, sticking his camera anyplace it’ll fit, like the bullet hole in a hat or circling, like a vulture, high above the dusty town. Populated with a posse of pistoleer character actors, including Keith David, Tobin Bell, and Lance Henriksen as a leather-clad, card-hustling Quick Draw McGraw, the camera never fails to find an interesting face. Stone, Crowe, Hackman, DiCaprio, and an army of “That Guys” transform the town into a shooting gallery of legends. With a cast like that, it’s expected, but it’s never been this stylish, original, and fun.

Made after the tailspin of Spider-Man 3 and , Raimi’s return to horror was a celebration. For fans who went gaga over Spider-Man 2's Doc Ock surgery scene, it was making a good on a promise: Sam Raimi had not lost his touch. And wouldn’t you know it, Drag Me To Hell is an effective, funny, and scary parable about not compromising your values for financial gain, released appropriately right at the start of America’s financial crisis. Those lessons ring true for Christine (Alison Lohman), an everyday loan officer who, despite her reservations, forecloses on a destitute elderly woman’s house to impress her boss.Drag Me To Hell delivers what Raimi still does best: Tight, well-executed scares that leave room for gore and laughs. Perhaps more than Evil Dead II, Raimi marries horror and comedy, keeping the audience at a fever pitch as he carefully leads to a downer ending straight from the pages EC Comics. Never the most overtly political or message-driven filmmaker, Drag Me To Hell reminds viewers that actions have consequences and that no amount of personal forgiveness can make up for the violence committed by everyday people at the behest of a predatory banking system. Hey, Raimi’s never been big on happy endings anyway.

Whether it’s denying a bank loan or cutting up a girlfriend with a chainsaw, Raimi loves pushing decent people into bad situations. So it’s appropriate that his no-frills thriller A Simple Plan opens with our protagonist Hank (Bill Paxton) proclaiming “I was a happy man.” A Hitchcockian thriller that would make Patricia Highsmith shriek, A Simple Plan has an easy setup: Three townies find $4.5 million of drug money in a downed plane. As they map out a plan to keep the money, small deviances from that plan spiral out of control, leaving more bodies than they anticipated.Raimi keeps his camera fixed to the tripod here, allowing long takes and a couple of crows to do the talking. He stages two- and three-handers where characters become trapped in their decaying Minnesota homes. Outside, the negative space of the snowy acres of farmland exposes them to capture. Raimi always excels at visualizing turmoil but here proves he can do that with a Steadicam tied behind his back. Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, and Bridget Fonda are on another level, delivering realistic, rounded performances, where their surprising decisions guide the plot. Going against his every instinct, Raimi disciplines himself and makes one of the best films of his career, an efficient, malevolent nail-biter that only gets better with age.

Here it is, the mother of all independent movies, The Evil Dead. Made with an amateur’s optimism and the investment of every kind-hearted dentist in the Midwest, every frame of The Evil Dead is oozing with iconic visuals, sounds, and performances. The set-up is positively mythic. Five college students rent the scariest cabin in the woods and end up besieged by a malevolent spirit that wants nothing more to throw a young Bruce Campbell into as many bookshelves as it can. You can practically smell the bubbling latex and Karo syrup emanating from the screen.The Evil Dead favors ingenuity over all else. Turning the camera into the villain, Raimi saves himself the trouble of having to come up with an iconic monster. Instead, he can focus on the would-be victims, imbuing them with lives that make their turns heartbreaking and the horrors they face genuinely unnerving. Many horror films from this era dispensed the sex-craven teenagers with glee. Raimi’s camera loves killing them, but it’s Ash and the audience who feel their pain. Watching it more than 40 years after its debut, its refreshing lo-fi charms and wicked sense of humor still possess the viewer for its fleet run time. Stephen King famously called it “the most ferociously original horror film of the year.” It still holds that title.

Spider-Man 2 is the best, most sincere superhero movie ever made, one overflowing with romantic complications and human trials. Raimi returns to the same world with more passion, ingenuity, and know-how, offering a dynamic tonal range that swings from comedy to drama to horror with the flick of a wrist.Things haven’t been going well for Peter Parker (played with dewy-eyed dorkiness by Tobey Maguire). He has no money, his grades are slipping, and his personal relationships are in the toilet. Not to mention, New York has a Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) problem! With all these obstacles, Raimi leans on a foundational one: Peter has a crisis of confidence and, ironically, can’t find his footing, causing him to lose his powers. At the cusp of adulthood, Peter must wrestle with who he is, why he does what he does, and whether or not he’s on the right path. What young true believer can’t relate to that?But what good would a Spider-Man movie be without some heroics? Raimi and Molina create an all-timer with Doc Ock, a sympathetic villain with some of the most convincing special effects ever committed to screen. That train fight isn’t pre-vis. That’s Sam Raimi working with his camera, effects, and actors to create a grounded world for the fantastical to reside. From start to finish, the movie’s effects, its script by Oscar-winner Alvin Sargent, and the cast still feel as fresh and energetic as they did in June 2004. Hate to say it, but they just don’t make them like this anymore.