Review: Send Help (2026)

Send Help (2026)

Rated R for strong/bloody violence and language

Score: 4 out of 5

Continuing a recent trend of January horror movies being surprisingly good, Send Help is an intense survival thriller that proves that, no matter how many times he goes to work making big Hollywood blockbusters, Sam Raimi is still a master of frights who hasn't lost his touch even after doing this for more than four decades. In this case, instead of his usual wheelhouse of supernatural/demonic horror like the Evil Dead films, this is what seems on the surface to be a gritty, grounded "trapped on a deserted island" story... but it's one where, just under the surface, Raimi's trademark brand of slapstick horror madness lurks and frequently rears its head, applied not to monsters but to the very literal madness that its two protagonists fall into, the both of them getting the opportunity to give their best Bruce Campbell-as-Ash Williams impressions while at the same time crafting a pair of riveting characters. It's intense, it's beautifully shot, it's often darkly humorous even if I wouldn't call it a full-blown horror-comedy, it ought to give both Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien some more attention, and while its plot often teeters on the edge, it never trips over it and pulls me out of it. This is a simple yet fun movie that I expect to see last a long time as a highlight for everyone involved, and easily one of the better films of its kind.

Our protagonists Linda Liddle and Bradley Preston are a pair of white-collar corporate workers, Bradley having just been promoted to CEO of the whole company thanks to his family connections while Linda, despite years of loyal service and the fact that her work is invaluable to keeping things running, remains stuck in a thankless cubicle job thanks to both the blatant cronyism of the management (for starters, the promotion she was promised instead went to a new hire who just so happened to be Bradley's buddy from the fraternity and country club) and her own lack of people skills. That all changes on a flight to Bangkok, however, which crash-lands in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand with Linda and Bradley as the only survivors. On a deserted island, the power dynamic between them flips dramatically, as Bradley is injured and in no position to care for himself while Linda, who turns out to be an outdoor enthusiast who had even auditioned for a season of Survivor, is the only one who knows how to build shelter, start a fire, and find food and fresh water. Linda knows it, too, and the fact that she's not only living her deserted island fantasy but also in a position of power over the man who'd spent years belittling her and treating her like dirt quickly goes to her head as she spirals into madness and drags Bradley with her.

This movie is, for the most part, a two-person show that Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien carry for about 90% of its runtime, and here, they both demonstrate that they deserve to be bigger stars than they are. McAdams is an actress whose career unfortunately suffered thanks to the fact that, after Mean Girls and The Notebook made her a star, Hollywood unfortunately stopped making the kinds of romantic comedies she felt like she was set up for, while O'Brien's career as an action hero in the making was derailed by a nasty on-set injury he suffered on the set of the third Maze Runner movie that caused it to be delayed for a year. Here, McAdams is a world away from the rom-com heroines she used to play, instead making the appropriately-named Linda Liddle feel like the sort of person who Regina George would've gleefully mocked: a hypercompetent but also hyper-cringy woman who's always been better off alone and is about as inept at social interaction as she is amazing as a worker. The audition tape she made for Survivor lets us know that she has a lot of hidden depths, but it is also a hilarious display of why nobody else ever saw those hidden depths. Once she's on the island and no longer has to suffer the bullshit of others, however, McAdams transforms into a legitimate badass who knows how to keep herself and Bradley safe on the island, while also bringing Linda's most obnoxious personality traits to the forefront and twisting them into something that grows increasingly horrifying as the film goes on and she decides, y'know what, she actually likes it here. She felt like a parody of the final girl of a horror movie, one where the very things that make for a great horror heroine are warped into a grotesque mockery thereof, and an extremely effective and memorable villain.

O'Brien, for his part, starts the film playing Bradley as a guy who'd probably be the villain in another version of this movie, a privileged yuppie douchebag who blatantly favors his friends over more competent employees, is introduced hitting on an attractive young woman he's interviewing for a job even though we soon find out he's engaged (and meet his fiancé), and who we can just tell is probably gonna run the company into the ground as he drives out talented workers like Linda. O'Brien gives Bradley the sort of smarmy boss attitude that feels like it wandered in from an '80s comedy, and just as it is in many of those films, it is initially immensely gratifying when we see all of Bradley's bravado get stripped away on the island as he's forced to rely on Linda to keep him alive. But here, too, O'Brien excels at making Bradley a tragic figure and eventually a capable survivor in his own right, somebody who grows increasingly afraid of Linda and must work through his injury, his ego, and his lack of survival skills if he wants to make it back to civilization. As much fun as it was watching McAdams get to play the sort of crazy that she's never gotten to play before, it was just as riveting watching O'Brien bounce off of her as a deeply flawed man who I nonetheless still rooted for to make it out alive.

Behind the camera, Sam Raimi brings most of his trademark bag of tricks to the table, from his monster-vision chase cam to icky gross-out gags to both Linda and Bradley losing their marbles in a way that calls to mind Ash Williams as he's tormented by Deadites. There's a streak of pure Raimi-esque dark humor running throughout, too, from some of the mishaps Linda and Bradley get caught up in to the amount of bodily fluids they wind up drenched in. Even the admittedly rough-looking CGI did less to take me out of it than to add to the film's already heightened, over-the-top feel. Raimi knows what his brand is as a horror filmmaker, and he fully leans into it throughout. That's not to say that he's running on autopilot, though, far from it. He devotes just as much time to stunning tropical vistas and brutal, grisly action, from a scene of Linda hunting a boar with a spear to her and Bradley's increasingly tense interactions as each learns not to underestimate the other to a third act full of twists and turns that brings everything to a head and a darkly satisfying conclusion. The plot occasionally walks a tightrope when it comes to suspension of disbelief, especially in the third act, but I was just having too much fun to really notice until I actually sat down to write this review, which, for my money, speaks well as to this film's merits.

The Bottom Line

Send Help is likely gonna go down as yet another damn fine movie in the filmography of a great horror filmmaker. It's not revolutionary, but it does exactly what it sets out to do and it does it incredibly well, especially with two outstanding lead performances anchoring it. Go see it if you can.