[In Theaters Now!] Send Help

By Jon Abrams

February 16, 2026

In partnership with

“SEND HELP.” Okay, but who’s asking? There are really only two characters in this movie. Could both of them be asking for help? Or is it only one of them? And is it the one we’re expecting it to be?

This is mainstream Hollywood filmmaking, so maybe it’s a fool’s errand to place too much significance on what might just be intended to be (and is) a catchy title. After all, Christine in DRAG ME TO HELL wasn’t asking for anyone to drag her to Hell. Or was she?

But we’re not here to litigate that one. We’ve got more than enough to chew on at the moment.

SEND HELP is the new film from Sam Raimi, who isn’t remotely as prolific as a lot of us would love him to be. This is his first film since 2022’s DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS, and only his third since 2013’s OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL. Raimi is revered by cinemaniacs like myself for his EVIL DEAD films and by wider audiences for his SPIDER-MAN films. Both “trilogies” are game-changers, but just as interesting are the films that come in the spaces between them, like DARKMAN, THE QUICK AND THE DEAD, A SIMPLE PLAN, and even FOR LOVE OF THE GAME. These are strange, wonderful, idiosyncratic takes on various genres, the work of a master filmmaker stretching and flexing and roaming the zone in search of boundaries to push.

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SEND HELP is the new film from Sam Raimi, who isn’t remotely as prolific as a lot of us would love him to be. This is his first film since 2022’s DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS, and only his third since 2013’s OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL. Raimi is revered by cinemaniacs like myself for his EVIL DEAD films and by wider audiences for his SPIDER-MAN films. Both “trilogies” are game-changers, but just as interesting are the films that come in the spaces between them, like DARKMAN, THE QUICK AND THE DEAD, A SIMPLE PLAN, and even FOR LOVE OF THE GAME. These are strange, wonderful, idiosyncratic takes on various genres, the work of a master filmmaker stretching and flexing and roaming the zone in search of boundaries to push.

2009’s DRAG ME TO HELL was a throwback and also new ground, after five years and three massive superhero movies. It was a return to horror by a director who pioneered new ground in that genre, but it wasn’t exactly much like EVIL DEAD 2 or ARMY OF DARKNESS. Likewise, SEND HELP comes after two of Raimi’s biggest hits, and arguably (because I don’t know him personally, so how can I say?) two of his least personalized films.

It was high time for this Great Director to cut loose and get nasty. SEND HELP (titled ¡AYUDA! in Latin America) is the first Raimi movie to be rated R since THE GIFT in 2000, and it earns the rating. If it’s schlock, it’s schlock for grown-ups. I happen to think it is much more interesting than “schlock,” but also it’s too tongue-in-cheek to get too overly sober about.

SEND HELP is about a friendless woman who is both over-equipped and entirely out of place in the corporate culture in which she labors, holding out hope for the promotion she richly deserves, only to be denied it when the company where she works is taken over by the callow son of the powerful man who founded it. Underling and “superior” are thrown together by fate when the plane they’re taking on a business trip to Thailand goes down at sea. The young boss is injured, and his only hope is the woman who he’s disdained and derided, since she is uniquely suited to the situation, having aspired to compete on Survivor for years and possessing the spirit of a true champion of the “not here to make friends” reality-TV mega-genre.

Whatever you think of DOCTOR STRANGE, we’re going to have to agree that it was worth doing, since Raimi came out of that work-for-hire job having gained a working relationship with the great Rachel McAdams, who had been mostly under-served and under-utilized by those Marvel movies but who obviously knew exactly what to do with the role of Linda Liddle in SEND HELP.

Linda Liddle, as cannily created on the page by screenwriters Damian Shannon & Mark Swift (FREDDY VS. JASON) and as brought to unforgettable life by McAdams, is a character that is almost bigger than the film she’s in, which is ironic considering how overlooked she is initially by her new boss Bradley Preston, played by Dylan O’Brien. He’s only capable of seeing women who are statuesque, well-scrubbed, and shiny, like his fiancé Zuri (Edyll Ismail, who’s very sweet in the movie: what does Zuri see in this guy?). This is not a man who values women as anything more than status symbols, like the watches he wears. It’s cruel, it’s stupid, its short-sighted, and in this case, it’s a potentially fatal mistake.

On the island, Linda is unleashed. She attains her fullest potential. She glows up. Depending on which quasi-feminist text we have in mind, she’s either the Melanie Griffith character in WORKING GIRL or maybe more on point, Michelle Pfeiffer as Selina Kyle in BATMAN RETURNS. Hello there. Hell here. She’s still nice, but don’t you dare cross her.

Bradley, unfortunately, dares. In the words of Macbeth, “I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.” Bradley doesn’t have any idea who he’s fucking with.

SEND HELP has been described by some as MISERY meets CAST AWAY. That’s good pitch for the elevator ride, but I was thinking more like SWEPT AWAY meets HELL IN THE PACIFIC. The movie plays around with gender politics like Lina Wertmüller’s classic did, but these two castaways knock each other around like Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune did in Boorman’s underrated World War II flick. But in the end, Marvin and Mifune were matched equally, which is not the case here.

That’s not to undersell the deft performance by Dylan O’Brien as Linda’s nasty nemesis. He is fantastic in SEND HELP, absolutely and totally in the zone as a finance-bro rich kid yet just vulnerable enough that you, like Linda, almost buy his brief imitations of vulnerability and humanity. O’Brien is a huge, massive star already to the generation coming up under mine. This is a surprising and creditable role for him to take. Someone in his position could easily wait for something more heroic, but this kid came to act. Before now, I’d only seen him as Dan Aykroyd in 2024’s SATURDAY NIGHT, but he was good in that and he’s great in this, and he is officially on my radar.

But SEND HELP is Rachel McAdams’ show. As much as it’s a two-hander, the game is always heavily weighted in her favor. Is that a flaw? Not in my opinion. We, the audience, are mainly on Linda’s side from the start, but that’s primarily because she’s played by Rachel McAdams. It is no guarantee that Linda is a point-of-view character. She’s awkward and weird and eventually, more than a little sinister. Bradley is more outwardly detestable, but Raimi, as director, with solid assists from his two stars, ensures that our sympathies at least waver, if not flip outright from time to time.

Watching SEND HELP, I was struck by the fact that Rachel McAdams has now starred in another late-career crowd-pleasing thriller-comedy from a master of horror, although in RED EYE from Wes Craven she is bringing everything that Rachel McAdams conventionally can bring to a role. In SEND HELP she is doing something new and different and exciting, deep and nasty character work, no ingénue about it. It’s the performance to beat in 2026 so far, and the sky’s the limit from here.

As for Sam Raimi, let’s hope real hard that it’s not another four years, or Lord help us, nine, before he makes another movie. SEND HELP is vicious and clever, maybe not overly profound, but a real treat so early in the movie year. This is not a movie that Alfred Hitchcock would have made, but it’s proof that Sam Raimi can toy with an audience’s synapses much like Hitch could. (One difference is that Hitchcock did his cameos himself, while Raimi outsources the cameos to his old pal Bruce Campbell. The Bruce cameo in SEND HELP is a lot of fun.) What I love most about the movies that Sam Raimi makes “in the spaces between” is how they find him trying out new genres and storytelling styles, but even still, nobody anywhere knows what to do with a scene with a rampaging boar quite like Sam Raimi does. Go see this one in a theater full of people. Just hope you aren’t stranded on an island with any of them. Who knows what dark secrets they’re hiding…?

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