Sam Raimi is back to his old ways. Having spent nearly the entire 21st century being put through the franchise ringer, from a Spider-Man trilogy to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to a very strange Oz reimagining, there have been only a couple of original film highlights spilled in between. Drag Me to Hell developed a cult following, and his latest film Send Help seems destined to do the same.
Raimi is as close to a master of the schlocky and gory horror genre as anyone working today. The slapstick of his Evil Dead films and Drag Me to Hell are very much present in the tone of Send Help, a movie about a douchebag boss and his subordinate being stranded on an island following a plane crash that leaves everyone else dead. The catch? The fratty boss Bradley (played so, so well and stuck-up by Dylan O’Brien) is injured during the crash and has to rely solely, at least initially, on the survival instincts of his underling Linda, a corporate strategist played by Rachel McAdams. And luckily for Bradley, Linda is an avid Survivor watcher, having even recorded an audition tape for the show that gets humiliatingly played for the whole office before everything goes sideways. She puts those self-sufficient skills to immediate use, building shelter and collecting resources while he recovers, which mostly consists of Bradley lobbing intermittent putdowns at Linda while nursing a broken leg with all the patience of a bedridden toddler.
It’s a setup that Raimi and screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift milk for everything it’s worth. The first thirty minutes are breakneck in establishing the social dynamics of the office and positioning Bradley as so scummy that you’re practically counting down the minutes until he’s at the whim of Linda’s wrath out on that island. The trailer is not light on plot details in this regard, and going in with that full setup does make the film feel frontloaded to an extent. But Send Help really only works if the performances and Raimi’s situational humor and gore are able to keep up through the second and third acts. Which they do, in large part.
There’s a boar attack that gives McAdams the bloodied-up look you see on the poster that is about as gnarly as anything put to screen so far in 2026, and there are long cat-and-mouse sequences between Linda and Bradley that allow the film to reorient its sympathies a few times throughout. We sympathize with Linda at some points, and find her borderline psychotic at others. The movie has its fair share of twists and repositionings of POV, and the intermingling of practical effects and CGI isn’t necessarily to its detriment. It’s actually the inverse, giving Send Help the kind of campy touch that always suggests it’s in on its own joke. Danny Elfman’s score keeps pace with that energy beautifully, operating in the same register of darkly playful mischief that makes the film feel unmistakably Raimi from frame one.
But all roads lead back to McAdams, who is nothing short of incredible here. Raimi has said publicly that he felt she was underutilized in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and made it a personal mission to work with her again in a role that actually asked something of her. It shows. This is a committed, shape-shifting performance that is an absolute necessity in order to keep the film moving and engaging, carrying the full tonal weight of a movie that asks her to be charming, terrifying, pitiable, and deranged, sometimes within the same scene. There hasn’t been a performance quite like it from her before, and it’s the kind of role that should recalibrate how people think about what she’s capable of.
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Sam Raimi has only directed a handful of original stories this century, but when he has, they’ve been really solid. He makes it look easy, and no one has nearly the same acidic, fun touch as a director in the horror space quite like he does. This isn’t necessarily a return to form because I liked his Doctor Strange film, and haven’t found much of his recent work to be all that grating. But it’s great to see him working with original material again, and even better when it’s compounded by a McAdams performance unlike anything she’s done before. Real Raimi fans are going to love this one.
Score: 7/10
Send Help (2026)
- Cast: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien
- Director: Sam Raimi
- Genre: Comedy, Horror, Thriller
- Runtime: 113 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: January 30, 2026
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