Sam Raimi names a horror movie with a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score as his favorite recently released film

Sam Raimi has revealed his favorite recently released movie – and it's a horror film from 2022.  

"I thought Barbarian was great," Raimi said during an appearance at WonderCon when asked if he'd enjoyed any recently released movies. "That one was fantastic."

The movie, directed by Zach Cregger, follows Tess (Georgina Campbell), a woman staying in a Detroit Airbnb while she visits the city for a job interview. When she arrives, she finds that the property has been double booked – but that turns out to be the least of her problems when she discovers what lurks in the basement… Bill Skarsgård plays Tess' fellow guest, while Justin Long plays a disgraced actor and the owner of the Airbnb. Barbarian was a hit with critics and has a score of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers calling the movie "bracingly effective" and "an inventive, nerve-shredding horror film".

Raimi, who's directed everything from The Evil Dead to Spider-Man to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, was at WonderCon to promote his new movie Boy Kills World, which he produced. Directed by Moritz Mohr and starring Barbarian actor Skarsgård, the film follows a deaf man who's trained by a mysterious mentor to take vengeance on the people who killed his family. 

"We talked a lot about what we loved," Mohr told Total Film of the movie's influences. "I love old kung-fu movies. I love Asian cinema. I play a lot of video games and I read a lot of manga. Anime is a big influence. But also shitty little Saturday-morning cartoons that I loved growing up. I knew I wanted to make a revenge movie with a deaf protagonist, but that was literally the one constant."

Boy Kills World arrives on the big screen on April 26. In the meantime, check out our picks of the other best upcoming movies on the way in 2024.