All 7 Sam Raimi Horror Movies, Ranked

1 week ago 11

Published Feb 1, 2026, 6:50 PM EST

Jeremy has more than 2200 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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Sam Raimi has always been at his best within the horror genre. Well, actually, he’s a fantastic comedic filmmaker as well, so maybe he’s equally good within the realm of comedies. And then when he does comedy and horror at the same time, those films often end up pretty great. Further, he’s done well with superhero movies, especially evident by Spider-Man and its first sequel (Spider-Man 3 and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, not so much, but both definitely have their moments). And if you want another statement that makes that first sentence look even sillier, Raimi’s also done a Western (The Quick and the Dead), a neo-noir thriller (A Simple Plan), and a sports movie (For Love of the Game).

There are moments of horror to be found in some of his non-horror movies for sure, maybe exemplified best of all by the hospital scene in Spider-Man 2. Also, certain horror movies of his, as mentioned before, are also comedic, not to mention willing to combine horror with some other genres, so the following films are pretty diverse in terms of tone, and quality, to some extent. Most are pretty good, while some are great, and they’re all ranked below.

7 'The Gift' (2000)

Annie, frazzled, is visible through the crack in a door she is trying to quietly close in The Gift

While it’s a misfire by Raimi’s standards, The Gift (not to be mixed up with another film of that name, from 2015, nor the excellent Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode) is not a terrible film overall. It’s kind of just fine as a supernatural thriller that sometimes gets creepy enough to push the movie – or parts of it – into horror territory. Narratively, it concerns a single mother who is able to see people’s futures, or at least convinces people she can, but then that gift of hers has inevitable drawbacks and complications and on and on and you’ve probably seen this kind of movie before.

It does things okay. It is watchable, and there are some admittedly good actors in it, with Cate Blanchett being reliably good in the main role. Beyond that, though, The Gift is a bit slight, and it does also wear out its welcome, at a point. If it had built up to some kind of amazing ending or revelation, that might've helped, but as it stands, it’s really just decent at best. You're not really gaining or losing anything in particular by watching a movie like this, in all honesty.

6 'Darkman' (1990)

A masked Liam Neeson with a hat taking photos from behind a net in Sam Raimi's Darkman

Before Raimi's Spider-Man, there was Darkman, which does deserve credit for being one of those fairly uncommon superhero movies not actually based on a pre-existing comic book character. It also stands out for being a horror movie on top of a superhero one, though it doesn’t quite excel in either department. Maybe that’s okay when you're looking at the whole thing as an interesting hybrid of genres, but Raimi’s done better horror movies, and he’s also directed better superhero ones.

Still, there’s something here; enough so that you can mostly see why it’s become a bit of a cult film. It’s got a premise that involves an experimental treatment that saves a man’s life, giving him certain abilities while also impacting him negatively as far as his psychological state is concerned. He sets out to right certain wrongs that have been done against him, and so the whole antihero thing adds to the horror and makes it less of a traditional superhero movie than you might expect. Darkman is messy but interesting, and it is admittedly creatively shot (the sort of movie that’s directed a little better than it was written, maybe).

5 'Send Help' (2026)

At the time of writing, Send Help is Sam Raimi’s most recent film, and even if it’s not his most recent at the time of reading, one thing that’ll remain noteworthy about it is what it represents for the filmmaker: a return to R-rated territory for the first time in over a quarter of a century. His last one before was the previously mentioned The Gift, though Send Help isn't quite his first horror movie since then (more on the in-betweener in a sec). As for Send Help, the story is wonderfully simple and easy to describe, since it’s about a long-suffering employee and her new boss (younger and noticeably abrasive personality-wise) getting stuck on a small island together.

There are only so many ways a story with such a simple premise can go, so maybe that’s all that should be said. Where Send Help does choose to go is interesting, and sets it apart from some other movies that you might think about while watching it, like Cast Away, Misery, and Triangle of Sadness. It’s also a bit of a comedy at times, and probably more definable as a survival thriller than an outright horror movie, though there are still gross-out and even some jumpy moments here, sprinkled throughout. It’s relatively well-balanced and a good time. Once the 2020s are over, it’s unlikely anyone will say it’s one of the very best horror films of the decade, but it is entertaining, well-acted, and decently paced, and for a January release (while many are still catching up on awards favorites), that ends up being more than enough.

4 'Drag Me to Hell' (2009)

Drag Me To Hell's Christine Brown standing in a grave in the rain

Besides his first movie, Drag Me to Hell is probably the horror film of Sam Raimi’s that feels most wholly like a horror film, though there is some comedy here with how over-the-top certain things get. It’s about a loan officer who believes she’s been cursed by an old woman she had to give some unfortunate property-related news to, and things spiral out of control in her life in increasingly dramatic ways. There’s some progression here, as a demonic possession movie that’s a bit like The Exorcist structure-wise, though Drag Me to Hell is considerably speedier as far as pacing goes.

It’s a minor classic, as far as modern horror movies go, and many filmmakers would likely be happy if their best horror movie were as good as Drag Me to Hell.

It’s got a lot of energy, in other words, and it’s also noteworthy for feeling like one of the more extreme PG-13 horror movies out there. Some of the intensity is mitigated a little by the comedic beats, and it’s also probably more disgusting than it is outright violent, but it’s all more full-on than you might expect from a movie with the rating that movies within mass-appeal franchises like the MCU and Star Wars tend to get. It’s a minor classic, as far as modern horror movies go, and many filmmakers would likely be happy if their best horror movie were as good as Drag Me to Hell. But with Raimi, there’s a whole other trilogy that hasn’t even been mentioned up until this point, but now, its time has come.

3 'Army of Darkness' (1992)

Ash Williams with a metal hand in Army of Darkness

It’s tricky here, when it comes to addressing Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead movies, because each one is very different tonally, all the while they're pretty much equally great/satisfying quality-wise. When addressing things on a horror front, or with a focus on horror, though, Army of Darkness is probably the one that’s inevitably going to come in third place, what with it barely being a horror movie and all. Like, it’s hard to imagine many people being scared by anything that happens here.

It belongs to a horror series, though, and the enemies that the now badass Ash Williams has to deal with are still of the undead variety, but Army of Darkness prioritizes slapstick comedy, outlandish fantasy, and some surprisingly bombastic action over genuine scares. It works wonderfully, and seeing the progression throughout the trilogy, from horror to all-out farce, is great. But the other two are a bit more definable as horror movies, so even if Army of Darkness is just as good as them, as a piece of entertainment, those have to rank higher for present purposes.

2 'The Evil Dead' (1981)

The cast ride in the back seat of a car in the opening scene of The Evil Dead.

The Evil Dead is the original Evil Dead movie, and it’s quite comfortably Sam Raimi’s gnarliest and most horror-focused film, too. As mentioned before, Send Help and Drag Me to Hell had their comedic moments, but The Evil Dead is largely taken seriously, even if you might expect it to be kind of schlocky, what with the premise and the famously low budget the film had. There’s a potential camp quality owing to how some of the effects look, but this is really focused on horror more than anything else.

And parts of The Evil Dead do still disturb. It was originally rated NC-17, and might not be quite that confronting nowadays, but there are still some alarming places it goes to, and the film is indeed pretty nasty, for the most part. It kicked off a great trilogy, established Sam Raimi as one of the most exciting filmmakers of his generation, and does ultimately still hold up incredibly well as a cult horror movie.

1 'Evil Dead II' (1987)

Ash (Bruce Campbell) with blood on his face and concerned Annie (Sarah Berry) in the cabin in 'Evil Dead II'

Sure, Evil Dead II is less scary than The Evil Dead, and it’s also not as consistently hilarious as Army of Darkness, but it’s that much-needed middle ground between those two extremes, and a necessary piece holding together the two entirely different films on either side of it. Evil Dead II also works if you’ve never seen The Evil Dead, since it recaps and then kind of recycles the premise of the first film, just with a new approach tonally and some more confident filmmaking, on Raimi’s side of things.

This is him entirely in control, in a way you don’t often see in any movie, and it rivals Spider-Man 2 if you're talking about Sam Raimi’s best (or maybe most Raimi-ish) movie overall. It’s got sufficiently absurd physical humor alongside some gross-out moments and horror-centered sequences, and then everything is balanced a whole lot better than you might expect. It’s just an all-around winner, and if not Raimi’s scariest film, then probably his best (and boldest) that can count itself as a horror movie.