“He makes zombie movies, and he makes superhero movies. And sometimes he makes both in the same movie!”
So says the 12-year-old Marvel Cinematic Universe fan who lives in our house, describing director Sam Raimi’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” after a recent preview screening. Reader, he is on the nose with that assessment. The film is equal parts “Doctor Strange” sequel; harsh “WandaVision” do-over; and, for a climax, a festival of undead digital demons who wouldn’t be out of place in Raimi’s “Evil Dead” pictures or his delightfully zingy “Drag Me to Hell.”
This latest MCU bid to keep the MCU going until we’re all moldering underground is not business as usual. It is a paradox: a glumly playful experiment in testing the story limits of multiverse travel, while dramatizing all the wrong ways of dealing with grief, guilt and a broken heart (Strange’s and the Scarlet Witch’s). The script’s a messy sort of mess. There are also clear signs of a nervy director at work.
