The Best Movies Directed by Sam Raimi
Sam Raimi has pretty much checked off every box in his directorial career. From his humble beginnings working with a skeleton crew and a tiny budget to make The Evil Dead to his reinvention of the superhero film with his Spider-Man trilogy, he's made classics both big and small.
Which leads us to just one question: How do Sam Raimi's films stack up against each other? Do you prefer the ghoulish eccentricity of his Ash saga? (And if so, are you an Evil Dead II stan or is Army of Darkness more your speed?) Did he set a standard even he couldn't top with Spider-Man 2, or did Marvel's playbook bring out the best of him with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness?
Beyond his small-budget horror movies and his massive-budget superhero epics, he's done everything in between, sardonically mastering the art of the modern neo-noir with A Simple Plan, turning the Old West gunslinger mythos into a bonkers live-action cartoon with The Quick and the Dead, and mapping old-school horror onto a superhero origin story template with Darkman.
He's given us a sports movie (For Love of the Game), a supernatural thriller (The Gift), and even went back to his loopy, gross-out, splattery roots with Drag Me to Hell. But which Sam Raimi movie is the best? List below are each of the films Raimi has directed, including both feature films and shorts.
- When a failed nuclear fusion experiment results in an explosion that kills his wife, Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina) is transformed into Dr. Octopus, a cyborg with deadly metal tentacles. Doc Ock ...more
- The second of three films in the Evil Dead series is part horror, part comedy, with Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) once again battling horrifying demons at a secluded cabin in the woods. After ...more
- "Spider-Man" centers on student Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) who, after being bitten by a genetically-altered spider, gains superhuman strength and the spider-like ability to cling to any surface. He ...more
- Ashley "Ash" Williams (Bruce Campbell), his girlfriend and three pals hike into the woods to a cabin for a fun night away. There they find an old book, the Necronomicon, whose text reawakens the dead ...more
- 3rd Evil Dead movie. Ash (Bruce Campbell) finds himself trapped in medieval times. He must quest for the Necronomicon, a book of evil which can return him to his time. Unfortunately, he releases the ...more
- When thugs employed by a crime boss lead a vicious assault on Dr. Peyton Wilder (Liam Neeson), leaving him literally and psychologically scarred, an emergency procedure allows him to survive. Upon ...more
- Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) has a loving boyfriend (Justin Long) and a great job at a Los Angeles bank. But her heavenly life becomes hellish when, in an effort to impress her boss, she denies an ...more
- While in the woods near their small town, upstanding local Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton), his dim brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton) and their friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) discover a crashed plane with ...more
- A mysterious woman gunslinger, Ellen (Sharon Stone), saunters into the town of Redemption looking for revenge. Her father was killed by the town's sadistic mayor, Herod (Gene Hackman), who is in the ...more
- In the tiny town of Brixton, Georgia where nothing is private, a woman with supernatural clairvoyance, a young beautiful socialite who has mysteriously disappeared, and an assortment of colorful ...more
- Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and M.J. (Kirsten Dunst) seem to finally be on the right track in their complicated relationship, but trouble looms for the superhero and his lover. Peter's Spider-Man ...more
- When shady circus magician Oscar Diggs (James Franco) is hurled away from Kansas into the wonderful land of Oz, he thinks that fame and fortune are his for the taking. However, three witches --Â ...more
- Aware that partner Donald Odegard (Hamid Dana) wants to sell their security firm, Ernest Trend (Edward R. Pressman) hires Arthur Coddish (Brion James) and Faron Crush (Paul L. Smith) to kill him. The ...more
- Forty-year-old pitcher Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner) is practically a dinosaur by professional baseball standards, fast approaching the end of his career. But, as Chapel stands on the mound pitching ...more
- It's Murder! is a 1977 short film directed by Sam Raimi. It was co-written and produced by Raimi and Scott Spiegel, and stars both Raimi and Spiegel. Raimi's first directorial work, it co-stars his ...more
- Within the Woods is a 1978 horror short film written, directed and produced by Sam Raimi. Raimi drew inspiration from his earlier short film Clockwork, deciding to produce a "prototype" horror film ...more
- Clockwork is a 1978 American short horror film directed by Sam Raimi, starring Scott Spiegel and Cheryl Guttridge.