Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is coming! With a release date of May 6th, 2022, we’ve got less than a month until the (not quite) Sorcerer Supreme lands in theaters to begin his trek through the multiverse. And one question that’s been on our minds for a solid three years now is: How much of a horror movie is Doctor Strange 2 going to be exactly? Let’s investigate.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is the second solo outing for Stephen Strange, seeing him much more advanced in the powers he set out to master in the first Doctor Strange. Picking up where Spider-Man: No Way Home left off, Doctor Strange 2 will see Stephen being held accountable for the spell he cast that broke open the multiverse. Teaming up with Wong, America Chavez, and Wanda Maximoff, Stephen will face off against the Illuminati, Gargantos, Baron Mordo, and who knows how many other monsters and baddies. The film promises to be a sprawling, reality-bending adventure.
Keep in mind that the horror genre has some pretty fuzzy edges, so even after the movie comes out, there will likely never be a 100% consensus on whether or not it’s a horror film. Horror itself spans countless sub-genres—folk horror, psychological horror, horror adventure—and some of them don’t even incorporate the jump scares and supernatural elements that most people use to define the genre. With that said, though, there’s some pretty strong evidence that Doctor Strange 2 will send at least one shiver up your spine.
Horror Elements in the Comics
Before we look at the movie itself, here’s a quick rundown of why Doctor Strange is such a good candidate for Marvel’s first horror movie in the first place. Unlike some other Marvel comics, which take their world-building elements more from action, espionage, and science fiction genres, Doctor Strange has always been situated squarely in the realm of the supernatural. Take Nightmare, for example. One of Doctor Strange’s most memorable enemies, Nightmare rules over the Dream Dimension, where he tortures dreamers in their sleep. Doctor Strange also features H.P. Lovecraft-inspired monsters like Shuma-Gorath, a hideous being with tentacles and a giant eye. The storylines and visuals of Doctor Strange have always been, at least, horror-adjacent, when not veering directly into the realm of horror itself.
Kevin Feige’s Vision
The minds behind Marvel Studios are fully aware of Doctor Strange’s horror potential, and plans have been in place for awhile to give Doctor Strange 2 some elements of horror. In a 2019 interview with Collider, Kevin Feige referenced movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark when he discussed Marvel’s inspiration for Doctor Strange 2:
“I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a horror film, but it is, as Scott Derrickson, our director, has pitched it, it’ll be a big MCU film with scary sequences in it….It’s fun to be scared in that way, and not a horrific, torturous way, but a way that is legitimately scary, because Scott Derrickson is quite good at that, but scary in the service of an exhilarating emotion.”
Raise your hand if you were scarred for life by the face-melting scene in Raiders! Aww, to think that kids today might get permanently messed up from Doctor Strange 2…it brings a tear to my eye.
Scott Derrickson eventually left the production due to creative differences, but Feige’s vision of a movie with horror elements didn’t die. Instead, Marvel brought on the horror king himself, Sam Raimi.
Sam Raimi Sheds More Light on Doctor Strange 2‘s Genre
With Raimi known for such classics as Evil Dead and Spider-Man 2 (which isn’t a horror movie, but does have that amazing operating room scene), fans knew the moment he signed on that Doctor Strange would be getting a hair-raising makeover. Now, a new interview with Fandango gives us a glimpse into Raimi’s vision for the new movie.
“Doctor Strange in the comics has always dealt in universes and dimensions that were quite spooky, so we tried to bring some of that into this film. It is spooky at some times and scary at others….It’s unknown what you’ll find in the multiverse. It’s within that unknown that suspense and darkness exists. A tool to titillate the audience’s fear.”
Doctor Strange 2 isn’t the first Marvel movie to deal with the multiverse, of course, and the previous films and movies that dealt with the multiverse (either directly or in the background) did have slight tinges of horror to them. There’s the unsettling nature of some of the commercials in WandaVision, for instance, or Miss Minutes’s jump scare in the season finale of Loki. When you think about it, Raimi is right—the multiverse is the perfect setting for a horror movie. What makes classic horror tropes like dreams and the supernatural so frightening is that literally anything is possible, and the normal laws of physics and causality don’t apply. Likewise, anything is possible in alternate realities. It looks like Doctor Strange 2 will be ramping up that element of the multiverse.
The trailers, of course, already contain some recognizable horror elements. There’s zombie Strange, of course. We see him turning into a zombie, and then casting a spell with additional arms while in zombie-form. There’s the shot of him and America separating into block shapes while Strange screams in fear, or pain, or both. There’s the film version of Shuma-Gorath, now named Gargantos.
And then there’s Wanda, who describes her life as a waking nightmare and seems to live a double existence as a mild-mannered, orchard-tending recluse and the terrifyingly, embittered Scarlet Witch. It’s possible that Doctor Strange 2 will take some of its cues from the comics run House of M, which influenced WandaVision. In House of M, Wanda suffers unimaginable psychological stress from the loss of her children, and reshapes reality in an effort to recreate them. If she decides to do something similar in Doctor Strange 2, we could see her using her powers in some pretty alarming ways.
But, at the end of the day, remember that this is a Marvel movie, not Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s rated PG-13, so it’s not going to have any over-the-top gore.
If it’s at all comparable to Raiders of the Lost Ark, though, it WILL leave your kids shivering husks of their former selves.
(image: Marvel)
