SAM RAIMI: RANKED
- 35 minutes ago
- 13 min read
What is there to say about Sam Raimi except that I love him. I love him as a filmmaker, I love him as a human being, and I love the fact that he is one of those rare directors whose personality is stamped on every single frame.
You watch a Raimi movie and you don’t need the opening credits, you don’t need the title card, you don’t need somebody leaning over and whispering “this is a Sam Raimi movie.” You know. You can feel it.
It’s in the camera movement, it’s in the editing, it’s in the insane sense of humor that sits right next to the horror, it’s in the slapstick, it’s in the violence that’s somehow gleeful and grotesque at the same time, and it’s in that Midwestern, slightly dorky, warm, sincere heart that always shows up even when the screen is covered in blood, slime, eyeballs, and whatever other bodily fluids he’s decided to launch directly into Bruce Campbell’s face.
And yes, the Midwestern thing matters. Raimi is a Michigan guy, born in Royal Oak, just outside Detroit, raised in a Conservative Jewish family, surrounded by siblings, shaped by real family trauma, including the drowning death of his brother Sander when Sam was young, which Raimi himself has said colored everything he’s done since.
And you can feel that in his work sometimes, underneath the jokes and the madness. There’s grief in there. There’s fear in there. There’s a sense of the world being unfair and chaotic and cruel, which is why his comedy hits as hard as it does.
Raimi’s not doing jokes because life is easy. Raimi’s doing jokes because life is insane and terrifying and sometimes the only response is to laugh while you’re screaming.
He gets fascinated by filmmaking because his dad brings a movie camera home and suddenly the kid has a toy that becomes a weapon, a paintbrush, a magic wand, the whole thing. And like so many great filmmakers, he doesn’t start with permission or a studio or a plan.
He starts with friends and enthusiasm and a cheap camera and a willingness to work his ass off. He meets Bruce Campbell in 1975 and that partnership becomes one of the great director-muse collaborations in movie history.
Raimi, Campbell, and Rob Tapert, along with Ivan Raimi, are out there making Super 8 stuff, making short films, grinding it out, learning by doing, and then they make Within the Woods, and that leads directly into the miracle of The Evil Dead.
And look, I’m telling you, the first time I saw The Evil Dead it was mind-blowing. Life-changing. It announced a major horror auteur to the world, made with basically no money, shot over a long period of time in the Michigan woods, with people working weekends, nights, whenever they could, dragging equipment through mud, freezing their asses off, bleeding for the thing.
And Raimi didn’t have a Steadicam, so what does he do? He straps a camera to a 2x4, ties it to a car, runs it through the woods, makes the camera itself feel like a demon.
That’s the kind of ingenuity that separates the posers from the real deal. That’s not just “low-budget filmmaking.” That’s inventing your own language because you don’t have the tools everyone else has.
Then Stephen King sees it, praises it, that quote lands on the poster, and suddenly people pay attention, because when Stephen King calls something ferocious and original, you listen.
The movie becomes a cult hit, it becomes a theatrical experience, and then VHS arrives and it becomes one of those titles that video stores literally cannot keep on the shelf. That’s how legends are made.
Then Raimi follows it with Crimewave, that insane 1985 live-action cartoon co-written with Joel and Ethan Coen, because yes, Raimi is friends with the Coen Brothers, in fact, he appears in the Coens' Miller's Crossing as "Snickering Gunman".... and yes, that should make you love him even more.
Crimewave is basically Looney Tunes and Three Stooges and lunacy slammed into a feature length experiment, and it didn’t work commercially, partly because of studio interference, but it’s still a fascinating snapshot of Raimi’s brain.
Then he comes roaring back with Evil Dead II, which, to me, is the best of the trilogy and the purest expression of Raimi’s sensibilities: horror, comedy, slapstick, gore, insane camera moves, and Bruce Campbell giving one of the greatest over-the-top physical performances in cinema history.
The movie is hilarious. It’s brutal. It’s inventive. It’s basically Raimi saying, “oh, you thought the first one was crazy? Sit down.”
And Raimi is a proud Shemp guy. Proud. He loves Shemp so much he popularized the term “Fake Shemp” for stand-ins and body doubles. That’s how deep the Three Stooges DNA runs in this dude.
The stooges, old Universal horror, Hammer horror, Ray Harryhausen stop-motion, comic books, Mad magazine, all of it is in the soup. It’s why his movies feel like nothing else. They’re horror movies that move like slapstick comedies. They’re comedies shot like horror movies. They’re comic books that bleed.
Then comes Darkman, which is basically Raimi’s first comic book movie even though it’s not officially Marvel or DC. It’s his own creation, a gory, loud, R-rated superhero revenge picture with Liam Neeson, and it rules.
It’s stylish, it’s nuts, it’s heartfelt, it’s got that Raimi “push the camera into the insanity” energy, and it proved he could play in the studio world without losing what made him Sam Raimi.
Then he closes out the original trilogy with Army of Darkness, which is the silliest one, the most ridiculous, the one that leans fully into fantasy and comedy and stop-motion skeleton nonsense, and it’s glorious in its own way.
It’s Raimi and Campbell basically throwing a party with swords and one-liners and rubber monsters and Harryhausen inspiration...and it rules.
And then Raimi does the thing that great directors do: he refuses to be trapped. He goes into other genres.
He makes a stylized Western with The Quick and the Dead, and even in a studio Western with Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Russell Crowe, he’s still doing Raimi stuff, like shooting from insane angles and putting the camera in places cameras should not be. It’s like a comic book Western, and it’s a blast.
But then, in 1998, he makes the movie that, in my opinion, proves beyond any argument that Raimi isn’t just a “guy who does crazy camera moves and gore jokes.” He makes A Simple Plan, and it is an extraordinary, dark, Shakespearean tragedy.
Suspenseful, layered, serious, grown-up filmmaking with Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton, and it will have you sweating. That movie is a masterpiece. It’s one of his masterpieces. And it might be his best movie, which is saying a lot because this guy has made several films that could qualify as “best of their genre.”
He follows that with For Love of the Game, which is… look, it’s not horrible, but it’s not good. Raimi is a big baseball fan, a Tigers guy, and at that time Kevin Costner plus baseball seemed like automatic box office. The baseball scenes are solid. The love story stuff? Meh. It feels like a talented filmmaker doing a job, and you can feel the difference.
Then he comes back with The Gift, which is a return to that darker serious tone, with a terrific cast and Keanu Reeves being legitimately scary.
And then the big one happens. Spider-Man. Raimi takes his lifelong love of comics and brings the character to the screen in a way that, at the time, felt like a massive leap forward.
That first Spider-Man is a huge hit, and then Spider-Man 2 arrives and, yeah, I’ll say it: Spider-Man 2 is one of the greatest comic book movies ever made.
Better than almost all the corporate, assembly-line superhero sludge that has followed in the last twenty years. It’s emotional, it’s exciting, it’s funny, it’s inventive, it’s got real filmmaking in it.
And then Spider-Man 3 happens and we all know what happened there, studio pressure, too many cooks, Raimi himself has talked about how painful that experience was, and you can feel the strain. But even then, even in the mess, there are Raimi moments. There are flashes of the guy who made Evil Dead II.
Then in 2009, he returns to horror with Drag Me to Hell, and it feels like he’s back home. It’s gross, it’s hilarious, it’s mean, it’s inventive, and it has that glorious “Raimi is laughing while he’s torturing you” energy.
Justin Long is terrific, Alison Lohman is great, and the whole thing is like a haunted house ride built by a guy who also loves punching you in the face with a pie. I love it.
Then he does Oz the Great and Powerful, and I know people argue about it, but I think it’s wildly entertaining, beautifully designed, funny, and imaginative, with Raimi’s personality all over the place. It’s got that “storybook but slightly twisted” vibe that he’s great at, and he actually uses a big budget in a creative way.
And then we get to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which, for me, is the big disappointment. I actively dislike it. I think it’s the worst movie he’s directed, because the Marvel machine just sucks the personality out of filmmakers, and Raimi’s personality is what I’m showing up for.
There is one sequence in that movie, the music-note fight, that feels like Raimi got to sneak into the room and do something weird and playful and uniquely his. That’s it. The rest feels like a corporate product with a couple of Raimi fingerprints smudged on it.
Now, on the TV side, Raimi has been terrific. He’s produced a ton of stuff, including Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, and especially Ash vs Evil Dead, which is some of the most gloriously gory, funny, over-the-top horror television ever made.
He directed the pilot, he kept the spirit alive, and Bruce Campbell, his muse, his guy, is still out there being one of the most entertaining screen presences of all time. Raimi never forgets where he came from. He never loses touch with his roots. And that matters.
And personally, I can tell you, Raimi is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. Soft-spoken, generous, warm, great with fans, loves talking about old movies, genuinely interested in what you’ve seen lately. I’ve interviewed him, I’ve been around him at conventions, including Flashback Weekend, and he could not be more gracious.
It’s always refreshing when someone that talented and successful isn’t a jerk. Raimi is the opposite of a jerk. He’s a gentleman. He’s a filmmaker’s filmmaker who somehow also became one of the biggest commercial directors on the planet.
So yeah, I love Sam Raimi. I love his imagination, his humor, his gore, his camera movement, his versatility, his sincerity, his willingness to be ridiculous, and his ability to be deadly serious when the story demands it. You can spot a Sam Raimi movie from a mile away, and that’s the highest compliment I can give any director.
His new movie Send Help is out now, and that’s part of why I wanted to put this together in the first place, but I’m not ranking Send Help yet because I need some time to sit with it and figure out where it lands for me.
So what follows is my ranking of all 15 of Sam Raimi’s completed feature films, in order of my preference, best to worst. There are only a couple on this list that I don’t like, and there’s one I really dislike, but the rest range from “really solid” to “flat-out masterpieces.”
So here we go. All 15 Sam Raimi films, ranked in order of preference.
SAM RAIMI: RANKED:
This is Raimi’s masterpiece. Period. And I know that’s a big word to throw around, but come on…this is the movie where he takes all that wild energy and all that camera-wizard madness and channels it into something cold, bleak, and genuinely tragic.
It’s like a Midwestern noir morality play. Three regular guys, one stupid discovery, and a slow-motion descent into paranoia and bad decisions that just keeps tightening like a noose.
Bill Paxton is heartbreaking because he’s trying so hard to be decent, Billy Bob Thornton is like a human open wound, and the whole thing feels real in a way that is almost uncomfortable.
It’s suspenseful, it’s smart, it’s nasty, and it proves Raimi can do serious drama as well as anybody. No winking. No cute gags. Just dread.
The greatest horror-comedy ever made and one of the purest expressions of Raimi’s personality. This is the one where he takes the raw nightmare fuel of the first film and turns it into a splatterstick symphony.
The camera is possessed, the cabin is possessed, the deer head is possessed, Bruce Campbell is possessed, and Raimi is just giggling behind the lens while he drenches everything in blood and lunacy.
Every shot is kinetic. Every gag is insane. It’s scary, it’s hilarious, it’s inventive, and it’s one of the most influential movies ever made in the genre. This is Raimi fully unleashed, and it’s glorious.
One of the best comic book movies ever made, and still better than most of the corporate superhero sludge that’s come out in the last twenty years. It’s got heart, it’s got real character arcs, it’s got real emotion, and it has Raimi’s sense of style all over it.
The Doc Ock stuff is terrific, Alfred Molina is a perfect villain, and the action sequences are actually staged like action sequences, not like pixels smashing into each other.
And the movie gets the Peter Parker thing right: the burden, the sacrifice, the loneliness, the heroism, the constant feeling of “am I doing the right thing?” It’s big, it’s exciting, and it’s surprisingly moving. A genuine superhero classic.
This movie is still a minor miracle. Zero budget, maximum imagination, and you can feel how hungry Raimi is in every frame. It’s messy, it’s rough, it’s occasionally downright nasty in a way that even Raimi would soften later, but it’s also brilliant.
The inventiveness is off the charts. The camera movement is basically revolutionary for a low-budget horror movie, and the sheer commitment to terror is relentless. It’s one of those films that feels like it crawled out of the woods fully formed and bit you in the throat. And it launched everything: Raimi, Campbell, Tapert, the whole legend.
Raimi’s original comic book fever dream. This thing is loud, nasty, funny, weirdly romantic, and full of that twisted fairy-tale revenge energy. Liam Neeson is unhinged in the best way, Frances McDormand is terrific, and the whole movie feels like a pulp comic come to life with buckets of blood and manic camera moves.
It’s not based on an existing IP, which already makes it cooler, and it’s Raimi doing a superhero movie before superhero movies became the assembly-line product they are now. The tone is bizarre and confident and totally unique. I love it.
The most purely entertaining of the trilogy in a “let’s just have fun” way. It’s basically Raimi and Campbell turning the Evil Dead universe into a fantasy adventure comedy with stop-motion skeletons, one-liners, and a hero who is simultaneously a badass and a complete idiot.
Bruce Campbell is peak movie star here, he is swaggering, hilarious, and perfectly timed. Is it scary? Not really. Is it stupid? Oh yes. But it’s stupid in the best possible way, like a Sinbad movie filtered through the Three Stooges and a splatter movie. Total cult joy.
This was the big “welcome back” to horror, and it’s Raimi reminding everybody that he can still do gross-out fun better than almost anyone. It’s mean, it’s frantic, it’s disgusting, and it’s hilarious.
The set pieces are like mini amusement park rides from hell (literally) and it has that classic Raimi rhythm of “laugh, scream, gag, laugh again.” Justin Long is great, Alison Lohman is terrific, and the movie has this wicked sense of cosmic cruelty that makes it feel like an old-school curse movie with a modern splatterstick engine. I love how unapologetic it is.
The underrated serious Raimi thriller. It’s moody, it’s tense, it’s got that sweaty Southern gothic atmosphere, and it proves again that Raimi can dial down the madness and still create suspense like a pro.
The cast is stacked, Cate Blanchett is excellent, and Keanu Reeves is genuinely disturbing, which is not something you can say about every Keanu performance. It’s not as perfect as A Simple Plan, but it’s in that same lane: adult, dark, character-driven, and creepy in a grounded way.
This one gets more hate than it deserves. It’s messy, sure, but it’s also imaginative and it feels like Raimi trying to inject some personality into a giant Disney machine. There are moments where you can see him having fun, and when it leans into the weirdness, it works.
The visuals are often gorgeous, the tonal shifts are classic Raimi, and I like the idea of this con-man magician stumbling into heroism. It’s not perfect, but I’m always happier watching a flawed Raimi movie than a “perfectly manufactured” studio product with no soul.
This movie is the start of the modern superhero blockbuster wave, and it’s still a blast. Tobey Maguire is sweet and awkward in exactly the right way, Willem Dafoe is having the time of his life, and Raimi’s sense of comic-book framing and melodrama is perfect for this material.
It’s got genuine emotional stakes, it’s got iconic moments, and it feels like a director who actually loves comics making a comic book movie, which is not always the case now. It’s hugely important and still very entertaining.
A comic book Western with movie stars firing on all cylinders. This is Raimi doing what he does (wild angles, fast cutting, ridiculous style) inside a Western framework, and it’s a ton of fun.
Gene Hackman is wonderfully evil, Sharon Stone is cool as hell, Russell Crowe shows up with that early star power, and young DiCaprio is great. It’s not a deep Western. It’s a stylized shoot-’em-up carnival ride, and that’s exactly why it rules.
This is a fascinating misfire. Raimi and the Coen Brothers trying to make a live-action cartoon, and you can feel the ambition and the love of slapstick in every frame. But it’s chaotic, it’s uneven, and the studio meddling is obvious.
Still, if you love Raimi’s sense of humor and his love for the Stooges, there’s stuff here that’s irresistible. It’s not “good” in the traditional sense, but it’s absolutely worth watching if you want to understand the ingredients of Raimi’s brain.
The painful one. You can feel Raimi fighting the machine in real time. Too many villains, too many storylines, too much studio pressure, and the whole thing gets overloaded. That said, it’s not completely worthless.
There are parts that work, there are Raimi flourishes, and the emotional core with Peter and MJ has moments. But yeah…this is the one where the cracks show, and it’s frustrating because Raimi is capable of better. It’s the “what could have been” entry.
This is Raimi doing a job. You can tell. The baseball stuff is solid because Raimi loves baseball and knows how to shoot it, and Kevin Costner in a baseball movie is basically a genre all by himself. But the romance is bland, the structure feels forced, and it doesn’t have that Raimi spark.
It’s not terrible, it’s just…forgettable. Which is a weird thing to say about a Sam Raimi movie, because even his weaker movies usually have some personality. This one mostly doesn’t.
My least favorite Raimi, and the only one here I really, really dislike. It feels like the Marvel machine swallowed him whole and only allowed a few Raimi tics to escape.
There’s one terrific sequence (the musical notes fight) that feels like Raimi snuck into the editing room and had some fun.
But the rest is loud, weightless, and soulless in that modern superhero way where everything is “multiverse” and “stakes” and “CG chaos” and none of it means anything. It’s depressing because Raimi is one of the most distinctive filmmakers alive, and this thing barely lets him be Sam Raimi.
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