{"id":13956,"date":"2026-01-28T13:24:45","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T18:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=13956"},"modified":"2026-04-09T11:31:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T15:31:38","slug":"send-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/01\/28\/send-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Send Help"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Send Help<\/strong> (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th<\/sup> Century\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 113 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong\/bloody violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Sam Raimi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Damian Shannon and Mark Swift\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Danny Elfman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Bill Pope\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 30, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O\u2019Brien, Edyll Ismail, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Emma Raimi, Dennis Haysbert, Thaneth Warakulnukroh.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ****<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is the Sam Raimi we know and love! This is the Sam Raimi that gave us the Evil Dead trilogy (1981-93), Darkman (1990), A Simple Plan (1998) and Drag Me to Hell (2009). Remember him? He\u2019s back with the completely bonkers Send Help<\/strong>, an enormous step up from the disappointments- Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (2022)- that were his last two outings. It\u2019s a totally insane blend of Cast Away (2000), Swept Away (1974 or 2002, either version will suffice) and Lord of the Flies. It could also be described as an extreme version of 9 to 5 (1980). If this doesn\u2019t intrigue you, I don\u2019t know what will.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Office worker Linda Liddle (McAdams, Spotlight) is great with numbers, but not so much with people. Her co-workers either ignore her, brush her off or take credit for her work. She has a new boss, a toxic alpha male type named Bradley Preston (O\u2019Brien, American Assassin). He\u2019s the son of the previous boss who promised Linda a promotion. One of his first acts as boss is to promote one his golfing buddies over Linda. He tells her she\u2019s not executive material, but is willing to give her a chance to prove him wrong on a business trip to Bangkok.<\/p>\n

\u00a0En route to their destination, a storm causes their plane to crash in the ocean. Linda washes ashore on a deserted island. Initially, she thinks she\u2019s the sole survivor. Then she finds Bradley on the beach, barely conscious and horribly injured. She nurses him back to health only for him to berate her for not starting a signal fire. Big mistake, dude.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What Bradley hasn\u2019t yet realized is that he\u2019s not the boss out here in the wild. Linda is the one with serious survival skills. She reads books on the subject and religiously watches Survivor. She even sent an audition tape to be on the show. She\u2019s the one who gathers clean drinking water, hunts for food and builds a shelter. He\u2019s just some overgrown rich kid who\u2019s never known real hardship. The shift in power dynamics leads to a violent struggle for survival and domination.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m not one to exaggerate so you know I\u2019m being completely real when I say Send Help<\/strong> is the first truly great film of 2026. It\u2019s a gripping survival thriller that defies conventionality. Raimi upends the genre by infusing it with a vicious sense of humor and his natural propensity for diabolical mayhem. It\u2019s a never-ending game of power tug-of-war between two very different people, an entitled nepo-baby boss and a mousy office drone. Baby boss is shocked to learn his bullying tactics don\u2019t work in his current situation. His survival depends on the underling he thought had no value. Isn\u2019t irony great?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Both leads do an amazing job. McAdams plays a character that\u2019s the polar opposite of mean girl Regina George. Linda is a nice girl kept down by the toxic bro culture that permeates her workplace. They see her as powerless and she accepts it because she has no choice. When circumstances change, she transforms into a force to be reckoned with. Suddenly, she\u2019s the one holding the cards. It\u2019s not always a pretty sight either. She has no intention of allowing things to go back to how they were. The things she does to insure this…. well, I\u2019ll let you find out for yourself. McAdams makes the transition both believable and scary. This is one girl you don\u2019t want to f*** with.<\/p>\n

\u00a0O\u2019Brien is equally great as the a**hole boss, the type of guy that would keep HR busy if anybody had the nerve to report him. Early on, he asks an attractive female interviewee if she\u2019s willing to \u201cgo above and beyond\u201d in her duties. Yeah, we all know exactly what that entails. You can almost hear the walls come crashing down when he finally realizes the \u201cnormal\u201d rules don\u2019t apply because they\u2019re not in the office anymore. O\u2019Brien crushes it. He really makes you despise his character.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m not going to spoil the end of Send Help<\/strong>, but I will say it\u2019s a twist worthy of early M. Night Shyamalan. I honestly didn\u2019t see it coming, but it makes sense when you look back over the whole thing. The clues are there. What I really love about the film is its fearlessness. Raimi isn\u2019t afraid to reward bad behavior. He takes the story in directions you won\u2019t believe. It\u2019s a wicked good time.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Send Help (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 113 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong\/bloody violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Sam Raimi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Damian Shannon and Mark Swift\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Danny Elfman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Bill Pope\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 30, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O\u2019Brien, Edyll Ismail, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Emma Raimi, Dennis Haysbert, Thaneth Warakulnukroh. Rating: **** \u00a0This is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Send-Help-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13959,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13956\/revisions\/13959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}