Review: Send Help (2026)

I’ve always enjoyed Sam Raimi’s films—especially his horror films. Maybe it’s the frenetic way that they are shot and edited. Maybe it’s the wry—and, dare I say, delightfully campy—sense of humor that oozes from almost every frame of them. Or maybe it’s the way that Sam Raimi likes to baptize his protagonists by fire. You see, it doesn’t matter if it’s Ash Williams in The Evil Dead (1981), Christine Brown in Drag Me to Hell (2009), or even Peter Parker in Spider-Man (2002), Sam Raimi likes to put his characters through hell and back—and he often finds creative ways to soak them in all sorts of bodily fluids. (Be on the lookout for the vomit scene in Send Help.) The setup for Send Help (2026) is similar to the setup for Drag Me to Hell (2009)—one of my favorite fright flicks from the 2000s. Both films follow an ambitious desk jockey who, after seemingly being passed over for a promotion, finds herself in a perilous, life-or-death situation—a situation in which she will soon get the chance to get even with those who’ve wronged her. With that being said, for much of its runtime, I wasn’t entirely sure that Send Help was a horror movie at all, even though it was clearly marketed as such. (For the first hour, it seemed more like an off-beat romantic comedy to me.) But then, just when I started to forget that this was A Sam Raimi Film, the pitch-black comedy, the over-the-top violence, and the you’ll-be-watching-the-screen-through-splayed-fingers suspense came crashing in like a corporate jet in the Gulf of Thailand. I really enjoyed this film. It was fun, it was well-paced, and when things got going, they really got going. Here’s hoping Sam Raimi doesn’t wait another seventeen years to make another horror film.