Send Help

With Send Help, Sam Raimi returns to what he does best: a cruelly funny and tense horror thriller that turns humiliation into motivation and survival into a weapon. After the digital fireworks of Sam Raimi's recent studio work, this film seems more sober, more vicious, and much more personal in its cynicism, with a duo that plays out like a high-pressure mix of corporate satire and desert island panic, where the real monsters are not supernatural but painfully human. The script is deliciously acerbic: Linda Liddle is a high-performing strategist in a Fortune 500 ecosystem that treats competence as a renewable resource to be exploited and discarded, and as soon as her late boss's promise of promotion evaporates, the boys' club descends like vultures, rewriting the narrative of who deserves power. Sam Raimi depicts the world of work with a kind of everyday ugliness, with its petty humiliations, casual cruelty, and theatrical leadership, so that when the film later explodes into blood and chaos, it seems like the logical extension of an already violent system, but with better lighting and HR language.

One of the film's strengths is undoubtedly the presence of the sublime Rachel McAdams, who is simply phenomenal: unglamorized, tense, and initially self-effacing in a way that never feels like a cheap makeover gag, but rather the portrait of a person trained to take up as little space as possible. At her side, Dylan O'Brien is perfectly cast as Bradley Preston, the smug, nepotistic CEO whose confidence rests entirely on the work and fear of others. He's the kind of boss who can't do anything useful, but always finds a way to put you down. Their initial dynamic is painfully familiar (especially if you've ever worked under someone who uses feedback as a weapon of domination), and Damian Shannon and Mark Swift cleverly incorporate the Survivor detail, not as a ridiculous gimmick, but as a psychological clue: Linda's obsession with structured competition, endurance, and social maneuvering is actually a reflection of corporate life, except that the island will finally allow her to play by her own rules.

Then comes the crash, a virtuoso sequence by Sam Raimi combining black comedy and physical punishment, and the entire hierarchy of the film is turned upside down. Stranded together, Bradley's authority, born of capitalism, instantly loses all meaning, and his injury transforms him into a dependent burden; while Linda, armed with her ability to always clean up after others (and a true survival instinct), flourishes with a strange, almost radiant efficiency. This is where Send Help becomes truly addictive: it's not just a story of survival, it's a shifting power struggle where every gesture of kindness can be a trap and every excuse a strategy. Rachel McAdams embodies Linda's evolution with frightening control, her professionalism turning into obsession, her empathy morphing into something predatory, while Dylan O'Brien pulls off the feat of making Bradley detestable but at times, disturbingly, pitiful, so that you constantly reevaluate who is “winning” and what it means to win when the prize is nothing more than not dying.

Formally, the hand of gifted director Sam Raimi is unmistakable: roving camera, aggressive close-ups, sudden shifts in tone, and a joyful commitment to showing repulsive suffering, vomiting, wounds, oozing textures, and splattering violence delivered with the timing of a punchline. The only real sticking point is that some of the gore effects and creatures are a little too digital, losing the tactile charm that gave Sam Raimi's early films a magical, artisanal feel. Thematically, the script sometimes risks muddying its sharp critique of workplace sexism by pushing Linda to extremes that can be interpreted as insane rather than inevitable consequences. But even when these aspects falter, the film's momentum remains intact: the dialogue remains sharp, the tension continues to rise, and moral ambiguity is the intended goal. Send Help wants you to be complicit, to laugh and grimace at the same time.

While the ending seems slightly cleaner and quicker than the film's deliciously nauseating middle suggests, Send Help remains a mischievous little victory for the studio: a modern fable on the theme of “eat the rich” that is less about purity than about what power does to anyone who gets close enough to touch it. The best moment in the film isn't the gore (although there's plenty of it, and it's perfectly executed and controlled), but the way the island becomes a twisted professional evaluation where the two protagonists constantly test each other's limits, and where you sense that Sam Raimi enjoys cruelty without sinking into nihilism. It's a rare survival thriller that leaves you with a smile you don't entirely trust, and with Linda's mantra resonating like a corporate mission statement turned prophecy: no help is coming, so you'd better start saving yourself.

Send Help
Directed by Sam Raimi
Written by Damian Shannon, Mark Swift
Produced by Sam Raimi, Zainab Azizi
Starring Rachel McAdams, Dylan O'Brien, Edyll Ismail, Dennis Haysbert, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Thaneth Warakulnukroh, Emma Raimi, Bruce Campbell
Cinematography: Bill Pope
Edited by Bob Murawski
Music by Danny Elfman
Production company: Raimi Productions
Distributed by 20th Century Studios
Release dates: January 21, 2026 (TCL Chinese Theatre), January 30, 2026 (United States), February 11,2026 (France)
Running time: 113 minutes

Seen on January 20, 2026 at Publicis Cinémas, Theater 1

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