![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/iw-criticspick.webp.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When Rob Reiner<\/a> cast Kathy Bates in \u201cMisery,\u201d<\/a> there was a sense that lightning had struck twice. Not just because Bates was unknown as an actor, but because Reiner truly understood how to use a performer\u2019s perceived softness as its own weapon of suspense. The legendary film<\/a> from 1990 hinges on Bates\u2019 all-consuming transformation into Annie Wilkes, a mousy woman dismissed by the world only to reveal her vindictive nature when the rules collapse.<\/p>\n Sam Raimi<\/a>\u2019s \u201cSend Help<\/a>\u201d operates in a similar register\u00a0with a crucial, modern twist. Rachel McAdams<\/a> is not a secret waiting to be unearthed. She\u2019s an Oscar nominee (\u201cSpotlight\u201d), a romantic icon (\u201cThe Notebook\u201d), and one of the great comedic villains of the 21st century (\u201cMean Girls\u201d<\/a>). Casting her opposite Dylan O\u2019Brien in a two-hander survival horror-comedy<\/a> might sound, on paper, like a miscalculation. Dropping a full-blown movie star into a role that demands humiliation, restraint, and a willingness to look foolish can backfire. But here, it\u2019s a multiplying factor, and McAdams\u2019 star power doesn\u2019t flatten \u201cSend Help\u201d but electrifies it.<\/p>\n The most purely enjoyable Raimi film in years, the upcoming desert island debacle from 20th Century Studios is an ideal synthesis of the director\u2019s career thus far. It\u2019s got the gruesome ingenuity from his breakout debut, \u201cThe Evil Dead,\u201d fused with the pop-comic precision that made him a revolutionary force for Sony\u2019s original \u201cSpider-Man.\u201d Ghastly without being grim and morally queasy without being mean, \u201cSend Help\u201d delivers its biggest laughs and gasps through brilliantly managed physical suffering. That includes what may be Raimi\u2019s finest puke gag since \u201cDrag Me to Hell,\u201d and a vintage gross-out approach to black comedy that\u2019s executed with the confidence of someone who knows where to draw his line in the sand.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meet Linda Liddle (McAdams), a long-suffering corporate underling dragged on an international business trip after getting passed up for a promotion. Her new boss, Bradley Preston (O\u2019Brien), is a passive-aggressive tyrant with \u201cAmerican Psycho\u201d instincts. But boundless entitlement and a gift for micromanagement can\u2019t save him when their plane crashes in the Gulf of Thailand. He and Linda are the only two survivors, and with HR nowhere to be found, that fact immediately flips their dynamic. The kind of boss who would crawl inside your abdomen instead of turning down the air-conditioning, Bradley suddenly can\u2019t function without Linda. What\u2019s worse, he\u2019s got a bum leg and couldn\u2019t outrun her (or any other threat) if he tried.<\/p>\n Raimi and screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (\u201cFreddy vs. Jason,\u201d \u201cFriday the 13th,\u201d \u201cBaywatch\u201d) waste no time turning the island into a pressure cooker. At first, the setting feels pulled from grounded survival dramas like \u201cCast Away\u201d or \u201cThe Impossible.\u201d But Linda, armed with decades of \u201cSurvivor\u201d knowledge and the quiet competence of someone who\u2019s always cleaning up other people\u2019s messes, thrives with cartoonish joy. Shortly after washing ashore, she builds shelter, starts a fire, collects water, goes fishing, and adopts a breezy efficiency that borders on smug. Soon, she\u2019s carved her name into a cup and woven herself a backpack: territorial gestures that mirror the small ways she once claimed space in the office.<\/p>\n Simultaneously, Bradley collapses in the absence of capitalism. He refuses to eat, complains about sunburn, and rejects the reality of the hell he\u2019s living in with relentless tenacity. His attempts at survival are so inept they feel like a self-own, and the jungle\u2019s creatures (rendered with goofy digital effects that are visually consistent enough to feel acceptable) seem to exist solely to punish him. The longer the torture goes on, the more \u201cSend Help\u201d starts to resemble Linda\u2019s wish fulfillment. Caught somewhere between \u201cOffice Space\u201d and \u201cI Spit on Your Grave,\u201d it\u2019s a workplace nightmare stripped to its rawest, most relatable revenge components.<\/p>\n That\u2019s where McAdams becomes indispensable. As Linda Liddle (a name that even sounds cut from the same cloth as Annie Wilkes), she\u2019s still an impossibly luminous presence. Introduced trudging around her sad little apartment in an oversized robe, talking to a pet cockatiel, McAdams can\u2019t hide who audiences know her to be. Even after colliding with Bradley on his first day as CEO and promptly spitting a tuna fish sandwich on him, Linda remains quietly glamorous and adorable. But McAdams\u2019 performance is so rigorously committed that dissonance becomes the point and her oceanside glow-up steers the film\u2019s second half.\u00a0<\/p>\n Like Anne Hathaway\u2019s Andy Sachs in \u201cThe Devil Wears Prada,\u201d Linda could sacrifice more of her dignity for her boss. But on some level, she chooses not to, and that restraint makes the island\u2019s psychological games all the richer. Trapped but still killing it, Linda isn\u2019t just retaliating; she\u2019s recalibrating a balance that\u2019s been wrong for years. When Bradley and his C-suite cronies mock her \u201cSurvivor\u201d audition tape on the flight over, hot tears stream down Linda\u2019s face. But by the time she\u2019s standing over Bradley\u2019s body on the beach, she\u2019s radiant with capability, embodying a reversal of audience expectations that\u2019s both satisfying and clever. In the end, McAdams\u2019 sexiness isn\u2019t incidental, but integral to how she\u2019s been misjudged.<\/p>\n To his credit, O\u2019Brien never overplays Bradley as the monster. Instead, he\u2019s indifferent and greedy, brandishing a laziness that\u2019s suffocating and a demeanor that\u2019s innately manipulative. He\u2019s the kind of man who thinks he\u2019s charming because his employees can\u2019t say no to him, and Raimi shows strong tonal control in how much he lets Linda punish him \u2014 allowing Bradley\u2019s torment to feel earned rather than sadistic, even as he blubbers, vomits, and otherwise pays dearly. The parable that follows him could be ripped straight from \u201cTales from the Crypt,\u201d offering a bold outline to a campy grudge match that shines brightest in its ethically gray framing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSend Help\u201d walks a treacherous line between cruelty and catharsis and, despite the dicy subject matter, somehow never tips into nihilism. The violence is sharp, and the comedy is clean, with Raimi observing his world\u2019s details with a hunter\u2019s precision. Whether it\u2019s Linda\u2019s skin warming into a confident tan, or Bradley\u2019s expensive dress shoes growing thick with grime, Raimi almost seems to sit alongside us,\u00a0gently suggesting whose side we\u2019re on and when. Conversations between Linda and Bradley play like a high-stakes battle of wits, but their director is never so far away as to make the match feel lawless.<\/p>\n The result \u2014 labor satire that hits without feeling like a prestige think piece \u2014 is uncanny in its timeliness. Linda\u2019s isolated, bachelorette existence and the casual judgment she faces for it mirrors a world that\u2019s increasingly hostile to women who choose to be single (though her backstory proves more complex than that). If \u201cDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness\u201d proved Raimi could juggle infinite self-referential, superhero jokes, \u201cSend Help\u201d applies that same dexterity to a more universally funny concept. In an era where originality struggles to be rewarded, this feels like a genuine studio win for genre fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n The opposite of an endurance test, Raimi\u2019s latest ultimately leaves you in a sense of glee. Crescendoing into a perfect punchline (one that satisfies whether you see it coming or not), Raimi doesn\u2019t pull punches \u2014\u00a0but he doesn\u2019t swing aimlessly either. Rather, he meets the audience\u2019s blood lust with the rare survival thriller you wish would go on longer. Yes, the glossy aesthetic occasionally dulls the impact of the director\u2019s more tactile sensibilities, and a few script contrivances stretch believability. Still, these are quibbles, not cracks, and they\u2019re easy to ignore.<\/p>\n Wickedly lovable with the potential to be timeless, \u201cSend Help\u201d is controlled delirium microwaved on high heat. At 66, Raimi reminds us who he was when he made horror-comedy history with \u201cEvil Dead II,\u201d and more importantly, why his voice still matters. Watching McAdams snarl and strategize, you can practically imagine how much fun Raimi would\u2019ve had handing her a chainsaw in the \u201980s. He still splatters her with blood here, proving it\u2019s never too late for the right collaboration, and that neither he nor McAdams should ever be underestimated.<\/p>\n Grade: A-<\/p>\n From 20th Century Studios, \u201cSend Help\u201d is in theaters January 30. <\/p>\n Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/a>\u00a0to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Rob Reiner cast Kathy Bates in \u201cMisery,\u201d there was a sense that lightning had struck twice. Not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[64693,88,2695,126376,900,80362,126193],"class_list":["post-431355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-dylan-obrien","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-rachel-mcadams","tag-reviews","tag-sam-raimi","tag-send-help"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Brandon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/housemaid-unit-250115-00429rc.jpg\")
<\/a> ![\"'Gail](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Screen-Shot-2026-01-25-at-10.58.11-PM.png\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"SEND](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/MCDSEHE_H3011.jpg\")
\u201cSend Help\u201d\u00a920th Century Studios\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n![\"SEND](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/MCDSEHE_H3005-1.jpg\")
\u201cSend Help\u201d \u00a920th Century Studios\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n