Review: SEND HELP Is Sam Raimi Being a Maniac Again and I Loved Every Second of It
I’ve caught two early screenings of Send Help, the new horror thriller from Sam Raimi, and I am still riding that high. This movie is pure, unfiltered Raimi madness in the best possible way. I am a massive fan of the guy and this movie is a reminder of why I fell in love with his work in the first place.
It is loud, cruel, funny, bloody, and completely unhinged. It’s the kind of movie that grabs you by the collar, shakes you around, and refuses to let go. It takes you on one hell of an entertaining ride!
What really hit is you could tell how much fun Raimi is clearly having here. You can feel his fingerprints all over this thing. The camera work, the timing, the sadistic sense of humor. It is all very him. This is one of those movies that feels designed to entertain an audience while putting its characters through absolute hell.
There is a wicked joy baked into every turn of the story, and the movie is constantly pushing things just a little further than you expect. It’s smart, nasty, suspenseful, and laugh out loud funny but in the darkest ways.
Then there’s Rachel McAdams, who absolutely floored me. I’ve always liked her, but I’ve never seen her like this. She plays Linda Liddle as this quiet, overlooked accountant who has spent her entire life being underestimated, and when the situation flips, she goes full survival mode in a way that is both hilarious and wonderfully unsettling.
She brings this savage confidence to the role that feels completely earned, and watching her slowly embrace the chaos is one of the movie’s biggest pleasures. This is easily one of my favorite performances of her career.
Dylan O'Brien is right there with her and matches that energy beat for beat. He starts off as this smug, obnoxious boss and then gets stripped down to his raw nerves once they are stranded.
When the fear hits, you can see it all over his face and in his eyes. He makes you feel how trapped and powerless his character becomes, and it creates this fascinating power shift between the two of them.
Watching these characters circle each other, manipulate each other, and emotionally tear into each other is riveting.
In the story, a plane crash leaves Linda and Bradley as the only survivors on a remote island. Old workplace resentments do not magically disappear just because society is gone. Linda thrives because she is prepared, resourceful, and strangely thrilled to finally be in her element.
Bradley falls apart because he’s lost all control. What starts as a survival story slowly mutates into a brutal battle of wills where survival is about dominance, manipulation, and who is willing to go further. The escalation is wild, and the movie keeps finding new ways to twist the knife.
This is also one of those movies that you absolutely need to see with a crowd. Raimi knows exactly how to work an audience, and the reactions around me were half the fun. People were laughing, gasping, cringing, and cheering over the course of the movie.
The pacing is sharp, the script by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift is wickedly clever, and Danny Elfman’s score adds this manic edge that keeps everything humming. It feels like a throwback to the kind of mid budget genre movies that exist purely to entertain.
By the time it hit its insane finale, I was fully on board and loving ever minute of it. Send Help is mean, demented, and unapologetically entertaining. It is a reminder of how gifted Raimi is at giving audiences a great time while absolutely tormenting his characters.
This is a perfect popcorn movie and a total crowd pleaser, and I cannot wait to watch it again on the big screen with a packed theater losing their minds right along with it.