Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Review

There are twenty minutes of a real Sam Raimi film in here, and they are terrific. A corpse animated by damned souls, a witch crawling out of a reflective surface, a duel fought with floating musical notation, camera work that swoops and tilts like it escaped from a cabin in the woods. Elizabeth Olsen commits completely, playing Wanda Maximoff as a mother hunting her children through realities, and she is genuinely frightening in a way this genre almost never permits.

The problem is everything the film is contractually obliged to do around her. Wanda's turn depends on a television series the picture cannot restate, so a character who ended that story choosing to let go arrives here having chosen the opposite for no shown reason. America Chavez has one ability and no interior life, existing purely to be chased. The Illuminati sequence is a merchandising showcase that kills five characters in ninety seconds for a laugh. Benedict Cumberbatch is sidelined in his own picture. Raimi's craft keeps it moving, and it still plays like two studios arguing over a single cut.