Send Help

Screaming in the Sun

There is a specific, malicious glee that Sam Raimi brings to cinema—a sense that the director is a mischievous child holding a magnifying glass over an anthill, waiting for the smoke to rise. After a decade spent navigating the expansive, CGI-laden multiverses of superhero blockbusters, Raimi has returned to the sandbox, or rather, the sandbar. *Send Help* (2026) is a gleefully nasty, sun-bleached chamber piece that proves you don’t need a budget of two hundred million dollars to terrify an audience; you just need two people who despise each other and a sharp rock.



The premise is deceptively simple, echoing the survivalist geometry of *Cast Away* by way of the psychosexual torture of *Misery*. When a corporate jet goes down in the Pacific, the only survivors are Linda (Rachel McAdams), a hyper-competent but invisible middle manager, and Bradley (Dylan O’Brien), her charismatic but utterly useless boss. What follows isn't a story of cooperation against the elements, but a disintegration of the social contract. Raimi understands that the scariest thing isn't the shark in the water; it's the realization that the person sitting next to you by the fire is measuring your femur for broth.

Visually, the film is a masterclass in "daylight horror." Cinematographer Bill Pope abandons the shadows usually required for fear, instead opting for a suffocating, high-contrast brightness. The island is beautiful, saturated in postcard blues and greens that feel increasingly hostile as the runtime ticks on. Raimi’s camera is as kinetic as ever—whipping through the palm trees, diving into the surf, and zooming in on beads of sweat with operatic intensity. The environment feels less like a location and more like a gladiatorial arena, where the relentless sun acts as an active antagonist, bleaching the humanity right out of the characters.



At the heart of this tropical pressure cooker are two razor-sharp performances. Dylan O’Brien leans into a weaponized incompetence that is both hilarious and deeply unsettling; he plays Bradley not as a mustache-twirling villain, but as a man whose entire existence is propped up by the labor of others. But this is McAdams’ movie. As Linda, she undergoes a transformation that is terrifying to behold. She doesn't just survive; she ascends. The script cleverly strips away the HR-approved veneer of the modern workplace to reveal the primal dominance hierarchy underneath. When Linda cauterizes a wound or sharpens a bamboo spear, we aren't seeing heroism—we are seeing a lifetime of suppressed corporate rage finally finding a physical outlet.



*Send Help* succeeds because it refuses to soften its edges. It is a film about the violent reclamation of power, executed with the slapstick cruelty that only Raimi can deliver. It sits comfortably alongside his best work, reminding us that horror is often most effective when it is intimate, personal, and drenched in sunshine. This isn't just a survival thriller; it is a primal scream from the middle management of the soul, and it is absolutely deafening.