Do we like Sam Raimi?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful found in his words or work and a long, steady career, but little documented good beyond the films keeps it from the top.
Raimi grew up the third of five kids in a big house in Franklin, a Detroit suburb. His dad made elaborate home movies, and Sam shot his first film at eleven and bought an 8mm camera at thirteen with money from raking leaves.
At Michigan State he met Robert Tapert, and with his brother Ivan and school mate Bruce Campbell they formed Renaissance Pictures. The Evil Dead, made for about $50,000, became a cult hit, and Stephen King praised it as the most ferociously original horror movie he had seen. He later co-wrote The Hudsucker Proxy with the Coen brothers.
Studio work followed with Darkman, then The Quick and the Dead, then A Simple Plan, which earned two Oscar nominations, and the Spider-Man films of 2002 and 2004. Along the way he produced a pile of genre films and the TV hits Hercules and Xena. It is the career arc of a bloke who never lost his love of B-movie fun.
The one real stoush on file is with Sharon Stone. At a Torino Film Festival panel in late 2024 she said he was very intelligent and funny, but claimed he had never thanked her or rehired her after The Quick and the Dead, which she says she helped him land. The article reported no reply from Raimi, so it is one side of a personal beef, not a court matter.
On the harm check we searched his name against LGBTQ+ and trans issues, women, climate, vaccines and politics, and found nothing harmful from him. A 2004 profile has him saying he tries to live a moral life and still practises Judaism with his family; faith is no strike here. That is a quiet record rather than a loud one, so we can't say he campaigns for anyone either.
The recent run is Send Help, which he says takes as original an approach as possible, a mash-up of old Hollywood traditions. He is now reported to be reuniting with its two writers for the Magic remake at Lionsgate. Nothing in that slate points to the grievance-industry studios we watch for.