Send Help (dir. Sam Raimi)

by Jack Martin | Feb 6, 2026

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 113 mins

UK Distributor: 20th Century Studios

UK Release Date: 5 February 2026

WHO’S IN SEND HELP?

Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail, Dennis Haysbert, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Thaneth Warakulnukroh, Emma Raimi

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Sam Raimi (director, producer), Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (writers), Zainab Azizi (producer), Danny Elfman (composer), Bill Pope (cinematographer), Bob Murawski (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A long-suffering employee (McAdams) finds herself stranded on a remote island with her boss (O’Brien)…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON SEND HELP?

Even though he is a living legend among genre fans, particularly those of horror and superhero movies, Sam Raimi is also an understated master of dark comedy. Whether it’s in the wacky slapstick of his Evil Dead trilogy or the campy comic-book nature of both Spider-Man and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, or even some of his more underrated offerings like Darkman, The Quick and the Dead and Drag Me to Hell, there are always touches of the filmmaker’s extremely playful and grimly hilarious identity in everything he puts his hands on.

Those hands have now touched Send Help, a script by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift – who previously wrote Freddy vs Jason which, funnily enough, got a spin-off comic in which the two slasher legends faced off against none other than Evil Dead hero Ash Williams – which almost feels too perfectly suited for Raimi’s twisted sense of humour. From its sudden bursts of gore to the occasionally gonzo plotting, this is a screenplay which only someone like Raimi could bring to life, and thank goodness he has because Send Help is easily the director’s most purely enjoyable movie in many years.

The film opens with Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams), a mousy and socially awkward yet eternally optimistic corporate strategist, getting passed up for a promised promotion when young and arrogant new CEO Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) enters the game. But just before you can envision this guy being a reject from a proposed Horrible Bosses 3, both Bradley and Linda board a plane to Thailand for a business trip, which mid-flight ends up crashing in the middle of the ocean, leaving them as the only survivors and stranded on a remote island. Luckily for Linda, a massive fan of the show Survivor and thus a natural when it comes to living in the wilderness, she is able to easily adapt to her new surroundings whereas Bradley has no survival skills whatsoever, yet he still treats her as much of a subordinate as he did back in the office. But thanks to her growing confidence and assertiveness, Linda isn’t going to take his crap any longer, leading to an increasingly tense battle of wits between the two as they try and survive together.

With Raimi at the helm, you know there’s bound to be some bonkers stuff on the horizon, and that is very much the case as Send Help wastes no time getting right to some of the more grotesque shots and uncomfortable camera angles. Within minutes, there’s an extreme close-up of tuna remnants dangling on the corner of a character’s mouth, and later on you’ll have scenes of people eating live cockroaches, gallons of yellow vomit pouring out of someone’s mouth, and perhaps the bloodiest and snottiest boar hunt ever put to celluloid. Naturally, most of these are played for uneasy laughs, and Raimi is clearly having the time of his life tapping into the dark comedy of a situation that, as we’ve seen in the likes of Cast Away and Triangle of Sadness, is not exactly a plentiful source of laughter. It gives the concept a freshness that makes many of the typical remote island survival movie tropes feel brand-new again, because the director is allowing us to see the funny side of it all rather than just focus on the bleakness of it all.

There’s also the fact that Send Help is more or less a two-hander between McAdams and O’Brien, with one character discovering their self-worth after experiencing such harsh mistreatment back in civilisation, and the other starting to recognise the error of their privileged ways while still maintaining the personality traits of a college-age frat boy. Their respective arcs are fun to see play out through Shannon and Swift’s script, but the actors really do bring them to life as both are fantastic at personifying a dynamic shift that’s practically unfolding in real time. McAdams in particular delivers a central performance so committed to Raimi’s vision that she not only walks away with her dignity fully intact, but also with the entire movie as her chipper personality crossed with an increasingly unhinged sense of authority and power, to where at times you may find yourself rooting for O’Brien’s douchebag boss over his (formerly) long-suffering subordinate.

Beyond the wacky gore and lively performances, Send Help works profoundly as a narrative because you’re never entirely sure where it’s going. This is a film that switches tones at the drop of a hat, yet it’s all extremely consistent with one another as the script lays out certain developments naturally while playing into other genres, including at one point the typical beats of a rom-com, before pulling the rug to reveal more suspenseful and shockingly violent turns that throw you off course in the best way. Raimi, of course, is very much in tune with Shannon and Swift’s writing and similarly brings an unpredictable energy to scenes where you’re never sure if it’ll end with a bit of romance or a jump-scare straight out of The Evil Dead, and by the time it reaches an absolutely deranged climax filled with Raimi-style violence and borderline cartoonish visual comedy, you’re so uncertain of how things will play out that you feel as though any moment could bring about yet another tonal shift, even when it appears to finally be winding down.

This is an excellent piece of entertainment, not without a few minor flaws (namely a couple of odd editing choices, but nothing that truly ruins the vibe) but by and large is a great theatrical experience. Muh of that is thanks to a filmmaker like Raimi, whose penchant for darkly comedic suspense could not have been more perfectly applied to a narrative and pair of performances that serve, in their own way, as a love letter to the wild sensibilities of a living genre legend.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Send Help is a fantastically entertaining dark comedy from director Sam Raimi, who taps into his playfully grotesque filmmaking style for a very well-streamlined narrative and pair of outstandingly committed performances from Dylan O’Brien and especially Rachel McAdams, making this one of the first great films of 2026.