Sam Raimi has spent most of the late 2010s and early 2020s as a producer, producing mainly horror features in films such as Crawl, Don’t Breathe and the newest instalments in what used to be his sole franchise, The Evil Dead. Raimi got big off the back of his original feature, The Evil Dead, released in 1981, a movie which hit the mainstream when getting praised by iconic author Stephen King. His career has been characterised by works in the horror genre, crafting a unique style which mixed the worlds of horror but also comedy, with slapstick genre features alongside those horror films. Evil Dead spawned a franchise, and he launched into even more success when helming the free Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man films, which made him into a blockbuster filmmaker. Since the release of Spider-Man 3 and him leaving the franchise, he only directed two features until 2020, the return to horror-comedies with 2009’s Drag Me To Hell and 2013’s Oz the Great and Powerful. A prequel to the Wizard of Oz, the film seemed to sour Raimi’s love for filmmaking for nearly a decade, with his only credits for a long while being as producer. It took another comic book film for him to come back, replacing Scott Derrickson as director of Marvel’s Doctor Strange sequel, 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It wasn’t a critically lauded film, but a film that proved that Raimi still had it, he could shine through with his stylistic quirks in a big studio film.
It seemed to get him back into the mood to direct as well, as we have entered 2026, and that marks the release of the first original Raimi feature since 2009, and his first R rated feature since 2000’s The Gift. Send Help stars Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien as they get stranded on a deserted island when getting into a plane crash. O’Brien plays the CEO of a company, and McAdams his employee, a dynamic which becomes increasingly twisted when employee becomes boss and boss becomes subservient when stuck on the island.
The film takes a while to get going, with a prolonged first act to get to the plane crash and set up the workplace relationship between employee and boss, but when the film gets to the actual survival aspect, it is an absolute blast. It has been a while since a Raimi movie has been able to go so far into the slapstick and goofy angle, and this film goes for broke in various instances, while remaining an entertaining and emotionally fulfilling narrative. The centre pieces of the film are the incredible performances from the film’s two leads, who are doing so much heavy lifting in a film which is essentially just them two for the entire runtime.
Rachel McAdams is an Academy Award nominated actress, a true powerhouse of a serious performer, with films like Spotlight and the Notebook showing off her talents, so its entertaining as hell to see her acting it up in a goofy film by Raimi. She commits to a crazy performance here, commandeering the screen and making herself the focus, playing well with the hilarious and over-the-top script by writing duo Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, who wrote the screenplay for horror crossover Freddy Vs Jason. Her performance is multi-layered and deliberately hard to track, as she moves from quiet and chaotically unsocial, to glowing up into a provider and survivalist, with a streak of meanness. Dylan O’Brien has a great performance here as well and seems to have been cast based on how hilarious his laugh can be, feeling like Raimi has found the perfect Bruce Campbell successor with that quirk. He plays the spoiled rich boy perfectly, and his movement from power-mad sleaze to subservient employee is entertaining to see for sure.
One of the most entertaining parts of both the script and both character’s performances is that both characters are far from saints, and the movie constantly plays with the audience for which character they are meant to root for. Dylan O’Brien’s Bradley is easy to hate at the beginning, a clear translation of a nepo-baby boss, who is there because of his family and not because of his skill, passing people up for promotions so his friends can also be wealthy. McAdams’ Linda feels like a typical protagonist, as the movie works from her perspective, but as the power of being the top-dog on the island goes to her head, she morphs into a near monster, sadistic and hiding information from both the audience and Bradley. Bradley retains his douche personality from the beginning, but he morphs into a survivalist himself, and you can only feel sorry for him for what he eventually must go through. O’Brien is so good at making you care for him, when he is playing such a horrible individual, and you cannot help but fall for the chemistry between the two actors and then feel even the sadder when the film becomes a cat and mouse game of control and into violence by the third act.
The film bears a lot of resemblance to Ruben Ostlund’s 2022 film, Triangle of Sadness, in how they both talk about class, and the relationship between bosses and their employees when survival pushes those dynamics out the door. That film also ends up with the characters stranded on an island, with the power dynamic shift leading the less fortunate to become as ruthless and careless as the people they once served. Raimi’s film is very clearly not as deep as that film, its just background dressing for a fun thriller, but it is notably there. It has something to say clearly about the dynamic between men and women in the workplace, toxic masculinity and how power can easily corrupt someone.
Raimi’s metaphorical exploration into these themes is very surface level at times, but that is to showcase how much he still has it in the directorial compartment. His directorial style is all over this film, with so many sequences that seem to be built just for the director’s taste, the screenwriters work perfectly to make this feel like a Raimi movie. All of the comedy comes from Raimi’s signature whip-pans and pull-ins, the movie would be no where near as effective without those quirks. There is a great use of close-ups in the beginning that marks the audience with an actual reason to also find Rachel McAdams’ character as gross. The movie manages to hold a great balance between slapstick, over-the-top comedy and genuine tension-filled drama, with some of the most over-the-top gore.
The movie is listed as a horror film in some areas, but that part feels a bit shoe-horned in to keep up with Raimi’s normal genre conventions, but the film would be more characterised as a survival thriller really. If you are here for brutal kills and some goofy gore through that, you are in total look, there’s some nail-biting gore sequences here, but it never goes too far in vomit-inducing mood because of the hilarious way the film conveys these sequences. It is a directorial style that may not be for everyone, but it’s something you won’t get from any other director and helps to showcase how important directorial voices are in these big blockbuster features. It can only be hoped that this will be major success and bring Raimi back for another outing and keep him working for the foreseeable future.
Rhys Reviews 