The number of upcoming horror movies isn’t necessarily the most impressive just yet, but 2026’s movie schedule boasts something that no yearly lineup has in more than a decade: a bona fide Sam Raimi horror movie. The no-frills, high-thrills flick Send Help, which critics have thoughts about, already looked like a return to genre form for the Evil Dead franchise director, and producer Zainab Azizi seemed to back that assumption up quite convincingly.
Azizi spoke with SFX Magazine on CinemaBlend about Raimi’s cinematic follow-up to 2022’s Doctor Strange sequel, which stars Rachel McAdams as Linda, a hard-working company loyalist whose career future is suddenly put in jeopardy when her late boss’ son, played by Dylan O’Brien, takes over the business. The apple fell far from the tree with O’Brien’s Bradley, whose charm can’t overshadow that “he’s entitled, and a bit of a jerk,” per the producer. The “bits of horror” come after a plane crash strands the pair on a tropical island.
To be sure, Zainab Azizi isn’t overselling Send Help as a supernatural gorefest led by Bruce Campbell, but everything he says about the movie could easily also apply to at at least 1981’s The Evil Dead, and possibly also Darkman and A Simple Plan, just to round the bases. As Azizi put it to SFX:
I’d describe it as a dark comedy thriller. Having Sam as the director, of course there are some bits of horror, given that he is the horror master. There’s a lot of comedy to it, too. When we cast Dylan, he just completely elevated it. He’s so funny and he brought more laughs to the screen than were written. And Sam, as you know, loves to blend the genres, so while it was written as a psychological thriller, a lot of comedy showed up.
Characters in psychological thrillers don’t usually show up completely covered in blood the way Rachel McAdams looks in the trailer, but we all know how much Raimi has loved to cover Bruce Campbell in blood even through the Ash vs. Evil Dead series. If McAdams is his new go-to in that respect, we all win. Oh yeah, O'Brien too.
Not to put too little attention on the comedy element, which I’m also looking forward to. The way the producer put it, the movie was crafted in the editing room as much as on the set. According to Zainab Azizi:
It’s so much in Sam’s wheelhouse. We worked with his editor, his long-time collaborator Bob Murawski, and Bob is a magician. Rachel and Dylan just gave it their all – we did many takes where a scene either went all the way comedy or all the way dark. That’s the magic of Bob and Sam; they were able to really fine-tune it in the editing room and find the perfect balance.
Nearly everything Sam Raimi makes has a vein of dark humor running through it, and he’s truly a master at blending genres in such a way, even if not all of his efforts are appreciated right when they come out. (Dammit, I already blew my Darkman reference earlier.) His last full-on horror movie was 2009’s Drag Me to Hell, which has aged as well as anything else in his career, and that has plenty of jarring laughs throughout.
Raimi and Campbell crafted one of the greatest horror-comedy characters of all time with Ash Williams, and those films are full of great characters. It’s a topic that Azizi also addressed, saying:
For him, it’s always about the characters. He always loves stories about rooting for the underdog. He had a great chuckle about the characters. He just loved the story of Linda Liddle, her journey from the start of the film to the end. It was definitely character first for him.
After seeing her Survivor audition video, I’m definitely ready to see Linda Liddle become a survivor heroine, regardless of whether her boss survives the journey. Just look at her go below!
I’m pumped to see Rachel McAdams back in thriller-mode almost as much as I am to see Raimi making another horror-thriller. So you can bet I’ll be in theaters watching when Send Help comes out on January 30, 2026.
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