‘Send Help’ (2026) review – sam Raimi’s Cruel, Giddy, Blood-Splattered Return to Rated-R Madness
The Long Way Back to R-Rated Chaos
It’s genuinely wild to say this out loud, but Sam Raimi hasn’t made a proper R-rated genre film in nearly 25 years. His last was The Gift, released at the tail end of 2000. What followed was a career detour that reshaped blockbuster cinema—his revolutionary Spider-Man trilogy—and later crowd-pleasing studio work like Drag Me to Hell (somehow PG-13 despite being unhinged) and the glossy misfire Oz the Great and Powerful. After nearly a decade focused on producing, Raimi dipped his toes back into directing with Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. This project clearly reignited his appetite for controlled chaos.
With Send Help, Raimi doesn’t just return to form—he gleefully sprints past it, cackling all the way.
Story & Setup: corporate Warfare, Island Edition
The premise is deceptively simple. Two co-workers survive a plane crash and wash up on a deserted tropical island near Thailand. Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a socially awkward but razor-sharp executive on the verge of a long-deserved promotion at a Fortune 500 firm. That future is abruptly torched when her boss dies, and his smug, entitled son Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien) inherits the CEO chair—and hands Linda’s promotion to one of his clueless buddies.
What initially appears to be a survival thriller rooted in workplace misogyny quickly mutates. Linda, it turns out, is obsessively prepared for this scenario thanks to her devotion to Survivor. Her trivia-nerd hobby becomes her weapon, flipping the power dynamic entirely. Bradley, utterly useless outside boardrooms, must depend on the very woman he professionally humiliated.
And that’s just the beginning.
A Script That Keeps Sharpening the Knife
Written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, Send Help refuses to settle into a single genre lane. It’s a survival thriller, then a corporate revenge fantasy, then a pitch-black comedy, then something disturbingly close to a warped romance—sometimes within the same scene. Linda is not a clean revenge avatar. She’s scheming, adaptive, and morally fluid, constantly recalibrating her motives as circumstances shift.
Crucially, the film never telegraphs its direction. Raimi weaponizes unpredictability, forcing the audience to laugh one moment and recoil the next.
Performances: Mean Chemistry, Perfectly Pitched
rachel McAdams delivers one of her most fearless performances to date. Her Linda is awkward, ferocious, vulnerable, and terrifying—often in rapid succession. Raimi’s manic energy meshes beautifully with her elastic screen presence, letting her pivot between deadpan cruelty and explosive mania without missing a beat.
Dylan O’Brien is equally sharp, leaning fully into Bradley’s nepo-baby scumbaggery. He makes the character detestable yet weirdly compelling, especially when the power imbalance shifts and fear replaces entitlement. Their scenes together crackle with hostility, desperation, and increasingly deranged humor. It’s hard to say who lands the bigger laughs; the film thrives on watching them push each other to psychological breaking points.
Direction & Tone: Raimi Unleashed
This is Raimi at his most gleefully sadistic. The film is drenched in bodily fluids—blood, vomit, snot—delivered with comic timing so precise it feels musical. Jump scares echo the spirit of Evil Dead, but the real horror comes from watching two people slowly poison each other under extreme conditions.
There’s a palpable sense that Raimi is directing purely for the gag, the shock, and the laugh—and somehow making it all feel cohesive rather than indulgent.
Technical Craft: Old Friends, New Limitations
Reuniting with longtime collaborators—composer Danny Elfman, cinematographer Bill Pope, and editor Bob Murawski—Raimi gives Send Help a propulsive, hyper-kinetic rhythm. Pope’s extreme close-ups heighten both the claustrophobia and absurdity of island survival, while the thailand locations add a sun-drenched irony to the escalating brutality.
That said, the film does stumble visually at times. Certain CGI-heavy moments betray a stretched budget, briefly breaking immersion. It’s not fatal, but it’s noticeable—especially when juxtaposed with Raimi’s otherwise tactile, physical filmmaking.
What Works
• Rachel McAdams in a career-best, feral performance
• Razor-sharp tonal shifts that never feel accidental
• A script that refuses predictability
• Old-school Raimi gross-out gags executed with precision
What Doesn’t
• Spotty CGI that occasionally undercuts tension
• A third act that may feel aggressively cruel for some viewers
• Not all thematic threads land with equal weight
Final Verdict: Welcome Back, You Maniac
Send Help feels like a director rediscovering why he fell in love with genre filmmaking in the first place. It’s nasty, hilarious, uncomfortable, and proudly unpolished in spirit—even when the visuals falter. Raimi proves that mid-budget, high-concept genre films can still thrive in a studio system addicted to safety.
This is his funniest, meanest movie in years—and one of his most alive.
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