This article contains spoilers for “Send Help.”
From 2009 to 2022, star director Sam Raimi only helmed three theatrically released feature films. He made “Drag Me To Hell” in 2009, “Oz the Great and Powerful” in 2013, and then the Marvel Cinematic Universe flick “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” in 2022. Raimi has a very good excuse for his absence from the big screen, however: He was busy raising his five children.
Raimi has returned in 2026 with “Send Help,” a thriller set on a desert island whereupon a hard-working office manager named Linda (Rachel McAdams) gets stranded with her cruel, a-hole boss, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien). The film traces the shifting power dynamic between Linda and Bradley, as Linda, a “Survivor” fan, knows exactly how to survive on a remote tropical island indefinitely, while Bradley only knows how to schmooze, play golf, and be cruel to underlings. On a desert island, Linda becomes the boss.
“Send Help” is a hoot. Although it’s a bloody tale of survival, Raimi keeps the overall tone light, and almost comedic. Raimi’s horror/comedy mixtures have always been a big part of his filmography, going all the way back to “The Evil Dead” in 1981.
There is one scene in “Send Help” where Linda gets to assert her dominance over Bradley by drugging him with an exotic octopus excretion and holding a knife on him, explaining that, well, it’s time that he be castrated. It’s one of the more memorable scenes in the film, and one that had audiences squirming in both discomfort and in twisted delight. Raimi and producer Zainab Azizi recently sat down with /Film to talk about “Send Help,” and they spoke about the castration scene and explained that the secret to making it work was Dylan O’Brien’s eyes-only performance.
Read more: 15 Horror Movies So Disturbing You Will Only Watch Them Once
How Sam Raimi filmed the castration scene in Send Help
Linda Liddle in a green palm frond hat in a hammock in Send Help. – 20th Century Studios
In the castration scene, Bradley has been drugged and is completely physically paralyzed and numbed, but is 100% lucid. Linda explains to him that the octopus toxin is a great anesthetic specifically because it lets her patient remain awake, even as he’s being, uh, operated on. Linda gets to tease him with a knife before seemingly cutting into him, and Bradley, unable to feel the pain and only able to express himself with his eyes, is utterly terrified. Blood spurts up over both of them as Linda apparently stabs Bradley, and Bradley looks on in horror, unable to scream. It’s like something out of a “Tales from the Crypt” episode, and it’s pretty glorious. Linda ultimately reveals that she was actually stabbing a rat just out of frame, and was threatening Bradley to scare him.
Raimi and Azizi loved the scene, and Azizi admitted to having a twisted sense of humor. Raimi felt the scene worked largely because of the performances. He liked that it was a good character moment for Linda Liddle, saying:
“I think that was all just about the writing and the acting. And we wanted to really — and Rachel pulled it off — believe that she was going to go through with what she started to let us in on, her plan. You don’t know at first, and it slowly comes out of her. She had to make it believable, as outrageous as it was. And I think the audience believed it. She had to make it believable for the character of Bradley to make it real for him, to let that lesson stick, and she did. And it worked on the audience, obviously, if it works on him. So it was all in her hands.”
So McAdams was great. But O’Brien, Raimi continued, was the real secret.
There was a lot of blood in Send Help, and Raimi had a dramatic reason for that
Linda Liddle, carrying a spear, in Send Help – 20th Century Studios
About O’Brien’s performance, Raimi said:
“I’ve never seen a better silent performance than Dylan over those four minutes just playing a scene with his eyeballs […] But the bladder of blood, she didn’t have to handle that. We had mechanical effects down below shooting bladders of blood at the two actors.”Â
Raimi added that he likes the violence in the movie, quipping that “Violence is golden.” But he felt that the violence in “Send Help” served a specific character purpose; it wasn’t just gore for gore’s sake. He noted that “sometimes there’s a reason for some blood to make something really intense.” Raimi doesn’t shock the audience at random, but to get them to pay closer attention. To that effect, about Linda, he said:
“This character went through a tremendous transformation. She’s an office worker that gets stranded on this deserted island, and there’s a rebirth that takes place because of the harshness of the island, the person she’s got to find within herself to be strong enough. And it’s kind of a birthing process, and blood, I felt, should have been an element of it. And I like horror movies and I love the effect that it has on the audience.”
Zainab Azizi added that getting that much blood on screen wasn’t an issue with the studio. Indeed, as she explained, Fox wanted “more ‘Sam Raimi moments,'” although Azizi knew Raimi himself hated the term “Sam Raimi moments.” But she added that “they were great partners, and they encouraged it, to take it as far as we’d like to.” Raimi took it plenty far, what with all the splatter.
“Send Help” is now playing in theaters.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.