Rachel McAdams Got “Drowned” in Brownie Batter For SEND HELP
If you’ve ever watched a Sam Raimi movie, you know the cast usually goes through the wringer. The filmmaker has built a reputation on pushing actors into messy, intense, sometimes ridiculous situations that somehow land right between horror and dark comedy.
His latest film, Send Help, keeps that tradition alive, but one standout stunt turned out to be a lot sweeter than it looked.
The survival thriller stars Rachel McAdams as an exhausted, overlooked, underappreciated employee stuck working for a nightmare boss played by Dylan O’Brien. After a plane crash leaves them stranded on an island, the tension ramps up fast and the two characters spiral into increasingly dangerous territory.
There’s plenty of the fake blood Raimi fans expect, but one of the film’s nastier moments came with an unexpected ingredient.
McAdams shared with Discussing Film that she was genuinely pumped about a scene where her character nearly meets her end face-first in what appears to be a muddy pit.
“I was excited about where I get like almost drowned in a mud puddle, and they said we're going to use brownie mix. We're just gonna put a ton of brownie batter in a hole, and I was like 'That sounds like heaven.'”
Having your face forced into a muddy puddle is never exactly fun, but if there’s a way to soften the blow, brownie batter isn’t a bad option. At the very least, it beats the usual mystery sludge these productions cook up.
O’Brien backed that up with a comment that raises even more questions about what the cast was dealing with on set, saying that “all the things were quite tasty,” which suggests many of the film’s most revolting visuals may have secretly doubled as desserts.
Whatever was in that fake blood remains a mystery, but the actors deserve credit for selling the gag. None of it looks remotely edible on screen.
Raimi has always thrived when he leans into that tightrope walk between gruesome and playful. From The Evil Dead trilogy to the criminally underseen Drag Me to Hell, his films often invite audiences to squirm one second and laugh the next. Send Help feels cut from that same cloth, embracing chaos while still finding room for a warped sense of fun.