Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Cast & Key People
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Our Review
The one where Sam Raimi snuck a horror movie into a Marvel release. Multiverse of Madness has dead bodies, demons, eyeball trauma, a full sequence scored to a two string musical fight, and a villain who does her murdering in a wedding dress. As a Raimi picture it is the most personality the franchise showed in years. As a story it is two movies stapled in the middle.
Elizabeth Olsen owns it. Wanda Maximoff, fresh off the grief of Wandavision, is the antagonist: a mother who found her children in another universe and will gut anyone standing between her and them. Olsen plays the corruption with real tragedy, and the film’s scariest scenes are hers, the Illuminati massacre especially, a slaughter played for genuine horror rather than spectacle. The fan bait of that council of cameos was the marketing’s whole pitch and the film kills them all in minutes, which is either the joke or the waste.
The first hour is setup and exposition with America Chavez, a young heroine whose power is being a plot device. The Strange variants and the musical notes fight give the middle its charge. The ending resolves into CGI arms and a third eye, and the whole multiverse premise stays a tease the franchise keeps promising to explore.
Flawed, gnarly, and worth it for the horror. Our score: 6/10.
Seasons
Season guides coming soon.
