After spending more than a decade mostly off the theatrical grid, Sam Raimi is back doing exactly what fans hope he’ll do when left alone with a camera, a wild idea, and a little fake blood.
His new film Send Help marks his full return to feature filmmaking in 2026, and it’s a reminder of how good he is at making audiences laugh, squirm, and recoil at the same time. He clearly had a fun time making this movie!
The movie strands Linda, played by Rachel McAdams, on a desert island with her nightmare boss Bradley, portrayed by Dylan O’Brien. Linda’s a sharp, capable office manager and a devoted Survivor fan. Bradley’s a corporate bully whose real-world power dissolves the moment the two are cut off from civilization. As the days wear on, the balance flips fast. On this island, Linda is the boss.
Even with the survival setup and plenty of blood, Send Help keeps things playful. Raimi leans hard into the horror-comedy mix that’s been part of his DNA since The Evil Dead. That tone peaks in one scene that’s already infamous among viewers: the fake-out castration sequence that leaves audiences laughing nervously while clutching their seats.
In the scene, Linda drugs Bradley with a toxin derived from an exotic octopus that leaves him completely paralyzed but fully aware. She calmly explains that it’s the perfect anesthetic if someone wants their patient awake during surgery.
Knife in hand, she toys with him, suggesting that his time as a functioning man is about to end. Bradley can’t scream, can’t move, and can’t even flinch. He can only stare.
Blood erupts across the frame as Linda appears to go through with it. Bradley’s eyes do all the work, locked in absolute panic. The moment has audiences cringing and moaning in shock. Then comes the reveal. Linda was never cutting him at all. She was killing a rat just out of frame, using fear as the real weapon.
Raimi and producer Zainab Azizi recently talked with /Film about why the scene works so well, and Raimi pointed straight to the performances. For him, the moment lives or dies on whether the audience believes Linda might actually go through with it.
“I think that was all just about the writing and the acting. And we wanted to really — and Rachel pulled it off — believe that she was going to go through with what she started to let us in on, her plan.
“You don’t know at first, and it slowly comes out of her. She had to make it believable, as outrageous as it was. And I think the audience believed it. She had to make it believable for the character of Bradley to make it real for him, to let that lesson stick, and she did. And it worked on the audience, obviously, if it works on him. So it was all in her hands.”
McAdams awesomely sells the confidence shift, but Raimi made it clear that the true secret weapon of the scene was O’Brien, who barely moves a muscle the entire time.
“I’ve never seen a better silent performance than Dylan over those four minutes just playing a scene with his eyeballs […] But the bladder of blood, she didn’t have to handle that. We had mechanical effects down below shooting bladders of blood at the two actors.”
It’s classic Raimi craftsmanship. Let the actor carry the terror, then punch the moment with outrageous practical effects. Raimi even joked about his affection for cinematic carnage, saying that “Violence is golden,” though he stressed that the blood in Send Help always has a job to do. It’s there to sharpen the emotion, not just soak the sand.
“Sometimes there’s a reason for some blood to make something really intense.”
For Raimi, Linda’s arc demanded it.
“This character went through a tremendous transformation. She’s an office worker that gets stranded on this deserted island, and there’s a rebirth that takes place because of the harshness of the island, the person she’s got to find within herself to be strong enough.
“And it’s kind of a birthing process, and blood, I felt, should have been an element of it. And I like horror movies and I love the effect that it has on the audience.”
Azizi added that the studio had zero issues with the film’s messier impulses. In fact, Fox encouraged Raimi to push further, asking for more moments that felt unmistakably his, even if he hates the label that usually comes with that request.
“They were great partners, and they encouraged it, to take it as far as we’d like to.”
Raimi clearly took them up on it. Send Help is nasty, funny, and sharply character-driven, and that infamous scene works because it isn’t just there to shock.
It’s the moment where Linda fully claims her power, and where Raimi reminds everyone why his brand of horror-comedy still hits so hard.
