‘Send Help’ – Review

People love to say they do not make movies like they used to. This is usually followed by a sigh, a vague hand wave toward the past, and a list of grievances about modern filmmaking. Except they do still make movies like that. They are just made by Sam Raimi. And with Send Help, Raimi reminds us that the real problem was never the absence of this kind of cinema. It was the absence of a real freak behind the camera.

Send Help is an original R-rated survival horror thriller released in early 2026, and just pausing on that fact feels worth celebrating. This is not a remake. Not a sequel. Not a reboot. Not a cinematic universe extension. Not based on a toy, a board game, or a mascot that smiles from a cereal box. It is a mean, pulpy, gross, hilarious, cathartically energetic genre movie made by a director who has never forgotten how much fun it is to push an audience to the edge of their comfort and then shove them clean off.

The setup is disarmingly simple. Linda Liddle works in strategy and planning. She is brilliant, awkward, underestimated, and quietly miserable. She believes she is in line for a promotion. Instead, she gets a new boss. Enter Bradley, played by Dylan O’Brien, a smug corporate climber with a silver spoon smile and a casual cruelty that will feel painfully familiar to anyone who has ever worked under the wrong person. Then comes the plane crash. Linda and Bradley are the only survivors, stranded on a deserted island with limited resources, unresolved resentments, and a rapidly shifting power dynamic.

If that premise makes you think of Triangle of Sadness before walking into the theater, you are not wrong. But that comparison evaporates almost immediately once the movie starts. This is not social satire dressed up as misery. This is something far grosser, louder, and more unhinged. This is Triangle of Sadness for freaks. Schlocky, pulpy, bloody, thrilling, and very, very funny. As soon as Raimi gets his hands on the situation, the film reveals its true nature, and it is unmistakably his.

The one-two combo of Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien is enough to move mountains on its own. Raimi dials that chemistry up to eleven by weaponizing every glance, every pause, and every micro shift in dominance. McAdams delivers an astonishing performance that carries the film through its rougher patches, charting Linda’s evolution from mistreated employee to resourceful survivor to something far more unsettling. There is a constant tension in her performance, a sense that you are watching someone discover parts of herself that were always there, just waiting for the right pressure to surface.

O’Brien, meanwhile, is having an absolute blast playing a complete nightmare of a human being. His Bradley is snarky, entitled, manipulative, and deeply insecure. Watching him get stripped of his corporate armor and reduced to a dependent liability is both uncomfortable and darkly satisfying. He does a remarkable amount of acting with his eyes alone, especially in the quieter moments where fear, calculation, and desperation flicker across his face in rapid succession. It is a genuinely great pairing, and Raimi understands that this movie lives or dies on whether you believe these two people cannot escape each other, emotionally or physically.

Stylistically, this is Raimi in full command of his bag of tricks. Crash zooms. Extreme close ups. Point of view shots. Match cuts that make you laugh and then immediately regret laughing. Buckets of blood and bile. Fluids gush with an enthusiasm that feels almost nostalgic. The visual effects are a bit shoddy at times, especially in broad daylight, but that feels beside the point. Even after seventeen years away from horror, Raimi’s passion for the genre still burns absurdly bright. When the violence hits, it hits hard and fast, jolting the audience in ways that feel gleefully cruel.

The score, courtesy of longtime collaborator Danny Elfman, leans into the energy of a forties adventure serial, bubbling and soaring in ways that elevate both the suspense and the absurdity. When the film looks like an old fashioned survival epic, the music matches it beat for beat, giving the whole experience an almost classical sweep before yanking you back into something nastier. Bill Pope’s cinematography, all aggressive framing and uncomfortable proximity, completes the Raimi reunion with confidence. The big three are back, and against all reasonable expectations, they still make it look easy.

Writing by Damian Shannon & Mark Swift ensures that Send Help zigs constantly. Just when you think you understand where it is headed, it takes a sharp turn that leaves you briefly worried it might not stick the landing. Then it does. Again and again. I felt lost more than once, only to look dumb as hell moments later when the film absolutely lands the plane. The last shot, in particular, is pure Hitchcock, a perfect punctuation mark that lingers longer than you expect and leaves you squirming in your seat.

Thematically, the film taps into something deeply cathartic. This is a story about toxic workplaces, power imbalances, and the quiet violence of being treated like a number on a spreadsheet. Raimi does not address these ideas with subtlety. He turns them into a sadistic game of survival, where resentment becomes a weapon and competence becomes a threat. Watching Linda reclaim agency in such an extreme environment is both thrilling and unsettling, especially as the film tests how far our sympathies will stretch.

There is a sturdy genre movie version of this premise that would be perfectly fine. You would watch it, nod along, and think it did its job. But you would probably also think how much better it could have been if a real freak were directing it. Sam Raimi is that freak. While this does not quite reach the nonstop delirium of his most chaotic work, the psychological games at play are nothing less than enthralling. The humor is sharp, the gore is nasty, and the sincerity underneath it all keeps the film grounded even as it spirals.

The crowd I saw this with was rollicking the entire time. Laughter and gasps overlapped. People squirmed. Popcorn flew. This is the kind of theatrical experience that reminds you why communal viewing still matters, especially for horror that knows exactly how to play an audience like an instrument.

It is only January, and we already have two bloody bonkers horror films to kick off the year. What a start. Send Help feels like a massive win for fans of Drag Me to Hell, a goofy, batshit insane cult classic in the making that proves Raimi has lost none of his instinct for crowd pleasing chaos. Gross, schlocky, pulpy, thrilling, hilarious. Terrific. A blast.

Send Help hits Theaters on January 29, 2026.