Director Sam Raimi (the EVIL DEAD movies, the first SPIDER-MAN trilogy, and DARKMAN, to name his most relevant credits here) makes his first new film in just shy of a decade, and it’s a simultaneously convoluted yet simple quest adventure sequel to not just Scott Derrickson’s first DOCTOR STRANGE from 2016 but also a laundry list of other Marvel-branded entertainment. And somehow it largely works! It’s not as uniquely its director’s baby as, say, THOR RAGNAROK or the GUARDIANS flicks — but as with Shane Black and IRON MAN 3, you can definitely see Raimi’s fingerprints all over it. The whole thing is soaked in Raimi’s particular visual language — from the tense edits, jump scares, and creatures that recall his early horror work to inventive scene transitions and overlaps that remind me of some of his more unique visual touches from DARKMAN all those decades back.
