As Tony Montana famously explained, first you gotta make the money, and then you get the power. But what happens when money doesn’t matter? A matter of pure survival can change power dynamics in a hurry, a fact that’s been explored in dramas ranging from 2022’s Triangle of Sadness to 1902’s The Admirable Crichton.
Next year, horror legend Sam Raimi is putting a corporate twist on this formula with Send Help, which pits a bigshot and their subordinate in a struggle for survival. What should be a fight against the elements soon morphs into a deadly game of cat and mouse, as revealed in the trailer below.
Send Help stars Rachel McAdams as Linda Liddle, a frumpy corporate worker who’s degraded and mocked by her boss, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien). As the sole survivors of a private plane crash, they must work together to survive. “But ultimately,” the plot description reads, “it is an unsettling and darkly humorous battle of wills and wits to make it out alive.”
“Darkly humorous” is the comfort zone for the director of Drag Me to Hell and the Evil Dead trilogy, but it’s actually been 16 years since Sam Raimi directed a horror movie. Raimi’s only projects since Drag Me to Hell in 2009 have been the family-friendly Oz the Great and Powerful in 2013, and 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. That MCU adventure showed off some of Raimi’s flair, but it only flirted with horror.
Send Help looks like Raimi through and through, a social satire that slowly devolves into something darker and grislier. It may be a simple two-hander compared to an epic like Multiverse of Madness, but this could be an opportunity for Raimi to return to his twisted roots.
A generation of fans may know Raimi best for his work on the 2000s Spider-Man trilogy, but horror will always be his home. Send Help is being released into the risky January dry spell, but that might be the perfect space for an original thriller. Like Linda, it could thrive in a deserted landscape and conquer the competition.
