Sam Raimi is back where he belongs.
One of the great genre innovators of his generation is returning to (broadly speaking) the world of cinematic suspense/horror with a new desert island survival picture, Send Help.
Rachel McAdams plays against type as a nebbishy, put-upon office drone (remember, kids, it’s called acting) and Dylan O’Brien is her arrogant brat of a boss. When McAdams and O’Brien become the only survivors from a work trip plane crash, finding themselves stranded on the aforementioned desert island, they find their roles reversed.
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O’Brien becomes the unhappy underling, McAdams the sadistic boss.
An initial U.S. trailer was released two months ago. Now, an encore teaser has been unspooled, just weeks ahead of the chiller’s slated Jan. 30 release.
At 109 seconds, 20th Century’s latest teaser for Send Help runs over a half-minute shorter than the studio’s debut stateside trailer. Typically, the first teaser is briefer and less revealing, with the story given more weight and time in a subsequent follow-up.
McAdams appears to be attempting a fresh wrinkle on her frumpy, overworked Morning Glory TV news producer heroine.
In portraying the ambiguous, possibly permanently cracked Linda Liddle, through her inaugural collaboration with Raimi, she seems to be tapping into a delightfully uncouth zaniness. We’ll have to see exactly where things go, but this writer, for one, can’t wait to get there.
O’Brien, best known for playing likable action heroes in the Maze Runner series and American Assassin, is stretching himself with his turn as this sniveling white collar tyrant.
That’s just what you do when Sam Raimi comes calling, in his preferred milieu no less.
Sam Raimi’s Decorated Filmography
The writer/director first burst onto the scene with the trailblazing run-and-gun indie horror comedy The Evil Dead, made piecemeal over several years with a pair of his fellow Michiganders, actor/producer Bruce Campbell and producer Rob Tapert. The trio would go on to make two more Evil Dead adventures together, with each subsequent installment increasingly opting to lean into the comedy/fantasy element.
Inspired as much by the Three Stooges as he was by contemporary horror, Raimi’s careening camerawork and signature melding of the macabre and silly instantly announced him as one of American movies’ bravura stylists.
He went on to helm such cult staples as Darkman, A Simple Plan, The Gift, and, most recently, the fantastic Drag Me To Hell. But even Drag Me To Hell is 16 years old now.
Raimi’s excursions in the worlds of thrillers and horror have been sidetracked a decent amount recently by men in tights. He directed the three Tobey Maguire-Kirsten Dunst Spider-Man movies. Their combined $2.5 billion box office helped kick off the hottest movie trend of the 21st century: the superhero flick. His most recent gig behind the lens ahead of Send Help was a well-received MCU adventure, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Now, though, Sam Raimi has come back home, playing in the sandbox we most want to see him dabble. Suspense and horror are ideal arenas for innovators — they fly a bit under the radar even when produced by major studios, contingent more on concept and execution than IP or $100 million-plus CGI effects budgets. Creators can experiment with tone and twisty narratives with borderline temerity.
A familiar Raimi face makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in the new Send Help teaser, playing the O’Brien character’s retiring father in a photo. Hopefully, we’ll see a bit more of him in the finished product.
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