Rachel McAdams has covered a lot of genres in her multi-decade career, but not since 2005’s Red Eye have we seen her go full thriller — and it’s possible she’s never tackled anything quite as dark as Send Help, which hits the 2026 movie calendar on January 30. Speaking of waiting decades for something, this upcoming horror movie features Sam Raimi’s first true foray into the genre since 2009, and it’s surprising to see just how funny critics find the gross-out horror.
First reactions to this “nasty little fucker” were generally positive, particularly for the director and his leads, Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien. In CinemaBlend’s review of Send Help, Eric Eisenberg praises the actors for bringing the needed charisma to their stranded characters, admitting that the “tense ride” also inspires “plenty of sinister giggles.” Overall, though, our critic is just relieved to have Sam Raimi back in the horror genre. He rates the movie 4 out of 5 stars and says:
It's a lightly upsetting thing that we had to wait nearly two decades for [Sam Raimi’s] newest proper contribution to the horror cinema canon – but now that we have Send Help, we can at least say that it was totally worth the wait. Forty-five years after the premiere of The Evil Dead, the man still has a genius knack for making audiences squirm, and it only further cements his important place in genre filmmaking history.
Anyone familiar with Sam Raimi’s horror knows he likes to add a side of humor to lots and lots of blood (and other assorted liquids), but even so, Kristy Puchko of Mashable says you're not ready for Rachel McAdams' “darkly, darkly funny” performance. Puchko describes her showing in a theater full of critics “yelping in shock and deranged delight,” writing:
Watching Send Help, my stomach churned, my jaw dropped, my eyes bulged, and I threw my hands over my face a few times to guard from the gross explosion on screen. Then I walked out cackling and giddy, because Send Help is not just one of the grossest movies I've seen in the last decade. It's also a rip-roaring, no-fucks-to-give good time.
Tom Jorgensen of IGN gives the movie an “Amazing” 9 out of 10, saying that Rachel McAdams’ range shows through, as she handles the humor and heaviness that are crucial to Linda Liddle’s story. This critic also writes of the giddiness induced by Sam Raimi, saying:
Sam Raimi drives the survival thriller genre to some amazing and sadistically giddy ends, with Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien along for the ride in the back seat cackling and stabbing each other the whole way through. Linda and Bradley’s ordeal creates immensely fertile ground for Raimi to interrogate the validity of first impressions with twists and turns of the plot and of various sharp objects that seldom tire. Sure, drag me to hell, but let's stop at this island on the way and have a freakin’ party with Linda and Bradley!
Alison Foreman of IndieWire gives it an A-, writing that not only is Send Help the most “purely enjoyable” Sam Raimi film in years, it’s Rachel McAdams’ “best comedy since Mean Girls.” This blend of humor and horror makes the critic imagine “how much fun Raimi would’ve had handing her a chainsaw in the ’80s.” Foreman continues:
[Rachel McAdams is] an Oscar nominee (Spotlight), a romantic icon (The Notebook), and one of the great comedic villains of the 21st century (Mean Girls). Casting her opposite Dylan O’Brien in a two-hander survival horror-comedy 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’s a multiplying factor, and McAdams’ star power doesn’t flatten Send Help but electrifies it.
Frank Scheck of THR says he can imagine screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift “cackling” as they predicted audiences’ gasps throughout the “darkly comic horror.” Also, the critic says it’s delightful seeing Rachel McAdams “let her freak flag fly.” Scheck continues:
Raimi… attacks the material with a joyous ferocity that proves infectious. There are several virtuosic sequences, including the plane crash and Linda’s duel to the death with the boar, that fully justify the film’s R rating and induce laughter with their audacity. The filmmaker seems to take delight in grossing you out while making you feel like you’re in on the joke.
Sam Raimi has a penchant for balancing out his horror with some laughs, and clearly from how many times critics talking about “giggles” and “cackling” and Rachel McAdams’ comically unhinged performance, Send Help is no different. The movie so far has compiled a 92% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, so if you want to see how funny this flick is, hit that theater starting Friday, January 30.
