One of the most exciting things about Send Help, the new movie hitting theaters this week starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, is that it’s a return to horror/thriller terrain for director Sam Raimi.
Raimi, who shot to fame with 1981’s inventive low-budget bloodfest The Evil Dead, has only made two movies in the past 15 years and both have been big-budget franchise fare—2013’s Oz the Great and Powerful and 2022’s Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. While those are perfectly fine blockbusters, they don’t really represent the Raimi I know and love.
While he rarely gets talked about in this way, Raimi is on my Mount Rushmore of favorite directors. When I was in fifth grade, my uncle showed me a laserdisc copy of Evil Dead II that would effectively change my life. I was already a movie fan, but that movie decapitated my perception of what a movie can be. Wait, this is a horror movie but it’s making me laugh? Wait, what is the camera doing here?
Sean Fennessey on The Big Picture podcast once referred to Evil Dead 2 as a gateway drug for people who are into movies. And that’s exactly what it was for me. I was on board for whatever Raimi did from there, and I gotta say he did not disappoint. He spent the 15 years after Evil Dead II bringing his innovative style to an eclectic range of movies, upgrading every one of them. And then finally it all clicked in a big way—the perfect marriage of filmmaker and material.
Raimi’s Spider-Man hit theaters on May 3, 2002. It was a massive success, taking the top spot at the domestic box office that year (well ahead of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones). I remember seeing both Spider-Man and Attack of the Clones in theaters on the same day and, as a huge Star Wars fan, being shocked at how much more I liked Spider-Man. Raimi would one-up himself two years later with Spider-Man 2, one of the best superhero movies ever made.
Since I’m pretty sure everyone is familiar with Raimi’s Spider-Man movies, and Evil Dead II has a strong reputation (though if you haven’t seen it, please do so ASAP), let’s set those movies aside for now. Here are three other great Sam Raimi movies to watch…
1. Darkman (1990)
Before he tackled Spidey, Raimi cut his comic-book teeth on Darkman—an original story he conceived that would later be adapted into a comic book series. Liam Neeson (years before he made Schindler’s List or saved his daughter from being Taken) plays Dr. Peyton Westlake (a great movie name), who is working to create artificial skin cells when thugs attack him and destroy his lab. He’s left disfigured, so he uses the artificial skin—which works fine in the darkness, but can only sustain in the light for 99 minutes—to assume various other identities.
Raimi employs this body-horror twist to deliver some fun, energetic, and clever action—including this memorable scene where, thanks to one of Darkman’s disguises, a bad guy (Dr. Giggles’ Larry Drake) comes face to face with himself in a revolving door. The DNA for what Raimi would ultimately do with Spider-Man is all here, though with a much darker tone—bridging Raimi’s earlier, bloodier work with the lighter, more colorful comic-book movies to come.
2. A Simple Plan (1998)
Every once in a while, an outside-the-box director needs to show people they aren’t just a novelty act; they could just as easily be great playing it straight. Think David Lynch with The Straight Story. The Coen Brothers with True Grit. Or Gus Van Sant with Good Will Hunting. So it was with Raimi’s 1998 film A Simple Plan, which, if we lived in a just world, would have cleaned up at the Oscars. Instead it settled for two winless nominations—Billy Bob Thornton for best supporting actor and Scott B. Smith for best adapted screenplay.
Raimi, who consulted with his buddies the Coen brothers on how to shoot in the Minnesota snow, brings twisting tension and surprise to this story of three men who stumble across $4 million while hunting. As you can guess, things don’t go too peachy from there. The movie boasts stellar performances across the board from a cast that includes Thornton, Bill Paxton, and Bridget Fonda. And while it might initially seem like Raimi is downplaying his typical energetic style, a spectacular sequence at the heart of the movie reveals this to be very much a Sam Raimi film.
3. Drag Me to Hell (2009)
After the success of the Spider-Man movies collapsed in on him with Spider-Man 3 (which as much as I want to like it I just can’t get past evil, emo Peter Parker), Raimi took his equity and returned to his roots. Blowing the dust off a script he wrote with his brother Ivan in the early 90s, Raimi delivered the tight, wild, and often very funny Drag Me to Hell in the summer of 2009.
True to its B-movie title, this movie puts its protagonist played by Alison Lohman (who has since retired from acting to focus on her family) through hell. She is the recipient of a lot of oozing, gushing, and spraying fluids. At one point, an old woman even has Lohman’s chin in her toothless mouth. You can feel the fun Raimi’s having radiating off the screen—especially in a seance sequence with a goat that goes haywire in a hurry. This is essentially Evil Dead 2 with slightly more of a story (bank manager gets cursed) and a bigger budget. It’s everything I want out of a movie.