Marvel fans who also enjoy scary movies got excited that the twain would meet when Kevin Feige announced that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness would be the MCU’s first full-blown horror film. Those fans got even more excited when Sam Raimi was hired to direct the movie. Raimi is the only director on Earth who can claim to have influenced both the superhero and horror genres with groundbreaking classics: the Spider-Man and Evil Dead trilogies, respectively.
But Multiverse of Madness’ promise of Lovecraftian horror has been taken with a pinch of salt, because the Doctor Strange sequel is still beholden to Marvel’s standard, restrictive PG-13 rating. There will be no gonzo Romero-style closeups of zombified Avengers feasting on the brains of the living and the evil Scarlet Witch won’t be as truly evil as the titular enchantress from Robert Eggers’ The Witch. Still, just because Multiverse of Madness will be rated PG-13, it doesn’t mean it won’t be just as terrifying as the rest of Raimi’s horror films.
“Rated PG-13” doesn’t necessarily mean “not scary.” The beauty of horror cinema is that filmmakers don’t need to rely on gallons of blood or graphic on-screen violence to shock their audience; just creepy imagery, a palpable sense of dread, and good old-fashioned Hitchcockian tension. There are plenty of great PG-13-rated horror movies out there that are as scary as the R-rated ones without the excessive gore – The Others, The Visit, A Quiet Place – and one of them was even directed by Raimi himself.
Drag Me To Hell Is A PG-13 Horror Masterpiece
After completing his Spider-Man trilogy, Raimi went back to his roots and returned to the horror genre (more specifically, his uniquely bizarre, darkly comedic vision of horror) with the 2009 hit Drag Me to Hell. It may be rated PG-13, but Drag Me to Hell still has all the jump scares, pitch-black humor, and disturbing visuals that Raimi’s fans have come to expect. Despite sharing the family-friendly rating of Raimi’s webslinging superhero movies, it’s just as twisted and unsettling as any of the director’s hard-R classics. With any luck, Multiverse of Madness will pack the same surprise.
Written by Raimi and his older brother Ivan, Drag Me to Hell has a classic high-concept horror premise. Alison Lohman stars as a loan officer named Christine who, in a bid to earn a long-awaited promotion, denies a third mortgage extension to an elderly European Roma woman named Sylvia Ganush. Ganush places a curse on Christine that, after three days of relentless supernatural torment, will pull her through a fiery portal into the pits of Hell. The movie uses shamelessly ghastly horror imagery to explore a traditional morality tale about a good person facing the consequences for a selfish, immoral decision.
Drag Me to Hell has all the hallmarks of a great horror story: an iconic villain, a protagonist with a clearly defined goal who’s easy to root for, and a succession of paranormal monsters to plague her. The first act sets up the story and characters nice and succinctly before Raimi kicks off the terror. The three-day curse adds a ticking-clock element as Christine does everything in her power to reverse the omen before she’s dragged to Hell. Like Hereditary, there’s an overwhelming sense of the inevitable throughout Drag Me to Hell. Much like the Grahams’ attempts to purge the pagan spirits from their home, Christine’s attempts to undo the curse placed on her seem futile. It’s not a question of “if,” it’s a question of “when.” Christine can delay her grim fate, but she can’t avoid it.
Audiences who are unfamiliar with Raimi’s style of horror usually don’t know what to make of Drag Me to Hell (a problem that Doctor Strange 2 might face when it hits theaters). Non-Raimi fans can’t tell if the spooky demonic sequences in Drag Me to Hell are trying to make them scream in terror, laugh hysterically, or throw up in disgust. The genius of Raimi’s technique is that he can do all three at once. Gross-out gags are R-proof, and Drag Me to Hell is full of them. Every single disgusting object or creature that appears on-screen ends up being shoved into Christine’s mouth by an apparition of the occultist old lady.
Any Marvel fans who are doubting Raimi’s ability to effectively terrify the audience or fully explore his typically bonkers concepts within the confines of the MCU’s usual PG-13 rating should give Drag Me to Hell a watch. It’s just as unnerving and darkly hilarious and wildly out there as the goriest, grisliest Raimi classics. If Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is even a fraction as scary and weird as Drag Me to Hell, then the MCU’s first horror movie is sure to be a resounding success.