There are few movies in my lifetime that were more hyped—or that I was more excited for—than Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man in 2002. I didn’t know Evil Dead from a hole in the head, but Jeff and Alex at St. Mark’s Comics in Tribeca assured me that a master was at work. They pointed to the Army of Darkness poster pinned above the entrance, sun-bleached and out of time, the illustration more paperback 1980s than 1993 Hollywood. There was no doubt that the movie would be good. I planned on seeing it at least 10 times just so I could beat my then-record: Star Wars—Episode I: The Phantom Menace, nine times in the theater, a thrill for all six-year-old boys and apparently no one else. Raimi’s Spider-Man proved more durable, an enormous commercial success that, along with Bryan Singer’s X-Men two years earlier, transformed comic book adaptations from costly gambles to safe bets. The Marvel Cinematic Universe had yet to rear its ugly head, and the production process of pre-2008 comic book movies didn’t produce the kind of sludge the world was subjected to in the last 15 years. Raimi and Singer’s superhero films, along with Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk, look like real movies, not video game cutscenes.
Raimi spent the rest of the 2000s filming two more Spider-Man movies, capping off the decade with one of his best, 2009’s Drag Me to Hell. The supernatural horror film starring Alison Lohman was, until last weekend, Raimi’s most recent horror film; in the last 17 years, he’s only made three features: Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), and this year’s Send Help, starring Rachel McAdams. Written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, Raimi’s latest is a nightmarish spin on Six Days Seven Nights, with a meek McAdams and her asshole, no-nothing, obnoxious boss Dylan O’Brien stranded on a desert island after a plane crash. Nearly all of the movie’s 113 minutes take place on the island, with supporting players like Dennis Haysbert getting just a scene or two; O’Brien’s corporate bros (among them Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang) are sucked out of the cracked fuselage moments after making fun of McAdams’ Survivor audition tape.
The Raimi that made Evil Dead comes out in full force during the plane crash: right before Samuel’s shot into the void, he clings to the side of the plane, face pressed against McAdams’ window, wide-eyed and goofy. Send Help is more of a horror comedy than the bracing Drag Me to Hell, a slow burn thriller with a shocking, audacious ending that soothes absolutely no one. There’s as many laughs as there are amputations and headshots in this movie.
Send Help is closer in tenor to the original Evil Dead trilogy than anything Raimi has done since.
Desert island movies, whether they’re romances, adventures, thrillers, or horror, have been done to death. Send Help not only manages to do something new within an exhausted formula, but it also allows its leads to be profoundly unlikable, or at least in McAdams’ case, somewhat un-sympathetic. You start the movie totally on her side, a frumpy and socially maladjusted spinster with poor hygiene, and you stay with her even as she plays mind games with eternal asshole O’Brien and delays their rescue simply so she can take advantage of him. Why not? This guy is the ungrateful son of the great businessman McAdams worked seven years for, the guy who just passed her over so he could promote one of his (formerly figuratively, now literally) brainless buddies. Even after McAdams drags O’Brien out of the sun, dresses his wounds, and brings him water and fish, he’s a picky eater, a chauvinist, “a monster” who tries to pawn off his sociopathy on his alternately absent and abusive parents. Despite sentimental interludes where the movie suggests these two might get together, McAdams and O’Brien are constantly plotting against each other, and we’re never certain what they’re up to. Unlike Weapons, you can’t guess the ending half an hour out.
Send Help, produced for $40 million, is already a success, earning $28 million globally in its first weekend. It’s another example of horror’s dominance in pop cinema this decade, and an encouraging moment for Raimi, who should make at least half a dozen more movies like this: original, sardonic, not too gory and not too goofy, and funny. You could argue that Send Help is merely another “eat the rich” entry in that tired trend—imagine Sarah Snook and Nicholas Braun stranded on a beach—but Shannon and Swift’s script never dips its toes into political moralizing or economic grievances. You hate O’Brien because he’s an asshole, not because he’s rich. McAdams has no issue with capitalism, she’s an eager participant, and in the end, she proves to be more of an entrepreneur than anyone else in the movie.
Silly but sturdy, of the moment but never didactic, and genuinely suspenseful, Send Help is a great start to another year of horror Hollywood, and, hopefully, the beginning of a more prolific and exciting phase of Raimi’s career.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NickyOtisSmith