Sam Raimi’s ‘Send Help’ Marks His Gritty R-Rated Comeback
Sam Raimi’s latest film, ‘Send Help’, sees the director return to R-rated horror for the first time in a quarter-century, with Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien leading the cast. The survival thriller hits cinemas in January 2026.
After a lengthy detour through more family-friendly fare, Sam Raimi is back in the director’s chair for a project that’s anything but tame. ‘Send Help’, his newest foray into the world of horror, has been handed an R rating—his first since the turn of the millennium. For those who’ve missed the director’s more unrestrained side, this is rather good news.
Gone are the days of PG-13 boundaries, as this survival thriller, featuring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, has been classified R for “strong/bloody violence and language.” Raimi’s last brush with such a rating came with ‘The Gift’ in 2000, a supernatural drama that starred Cate Blanchett and Hilary Swank. Since then, he’s been more at home with web-slingers and fantasy lands than with the macabre.
Back to Blood and Guts
‘Send Help’ is set to reach UK cinemas on 30 January 2026, with a handful of preview showings scheduled from the 24th. The cast is a proper ensemble: alongside McAdams and O’Brien, you’ll spot Xavier Samuel, Dennis Haysbert, Chris Pang, Emma Raimi, and Edyll Ismail. The script comes courtesy of Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, a duo with a knack for horror, having previously worked on ‘Freddy vs. Jason’ and the 2009 ‘Friday the 13th’ reboot. They even tried their hand at the ‘Baywatch’ adaptation, though that’s a rather different kettle of fish.
The official synopsis sets the scene: two colleagues, sole survivors of a plane crash, find themselves marooned on a deserted island. Old grievances bubble up as they’re forced to work together, but survival soon becomes a contest of cunning and resolve.
Raimi’s Signature Mayhem
Raimi, never one to shy away from a bit of mischief, told Empire Magazine he may have revisited some of his more notorious on-set habits. Fans of the ‘Evil Dead’ series will recall the director’s fondness for putting his actors through the wringer. He admitted,
“vomit in Dylan’s face. Throwing blood in Rachel’s face, throwing water in her face, poking her with sticks. Okay, yeah, I might have poked her with a stick once.”
It’s not the first time he’s gone to such lengths—during the making of ‘Drag Me To Hell’, Alison Lohman was famously showered with real insects for one particularly memorable scene.
Dylan O’Brien took it in good humour, saying,
“Puke in the face, yeah. It was mangoes that looked like berries, but I guess it was mango.”
McAdams, for her part, confirmed Raimi’s hands-on approach:
“He will not allow anyone else to be the gunk-thrower.”
She added,
“I thought he was kidding the first time, when he threw a bucket of water in my face, when the plane goes into the water. Nope! He takes his job very seriously. He practices. He rehearses.”