Unfortunately for Universal, you simply can’t expect Sam Raimi to direct without his standard visual flare. Instead of being the everyman the studio was likely expecting, Bill Pope achieved some extremely cool shots that looked like more polished versions of the ones in, you probably guessed it, “Evil Dead.” However, you shouldn’t just take my word for it. Read about what kinds of shots Pope did for yourself:
“We used the eyeball/flyball rig, the Perfalock dance-o-cam, the Perfalock drunken cam, snap zooms, whip pans, Dutch angles, cameras attached to sticks and blankets, and virtually anything that moved. We always moved the camera. I have a distinct memory of being told by our dolly grip on day 50-something that we were doing our first shot in the film where the camera didn’t move through space — and it was a 360-degree pan.”
So yeah, this was destined to be a Raimi film, no matter what limitations were put on it. It’s really such a shame that studio interference has always been an issue with the director’s filmography, from “Darkman” to the “Spider-Man” trilogy. He’s proven time and time again to be a unique and singular voice, so why have his works almost always had some sort of creative conflict associated with them? As the kids say nowadays, let him cook.