In a recent Reddit AMA, someone asked Sam Raimi for his biggest gripe about modern superheroes. The director of the genre-defining early 2000s Spider-Man trilogy responded wryly: “That they don’t offer me more of them!” No offense to Raimi, who is one of the best directors of all time (in my humble opinion), but I’m extremely glad Marvel and DC aren’t blowing up his phone, trying to get him to helm more of their comic book movie franchises. Because Send Help, his latest theatrical horror-thriller, proves how desperately we need him to keep making films like this.

With Send Help, Raimi makes one clever adjustment to his usual penchant for heightened acting, zippy cinematography, and buckets-of-blood gore. Instead of the horror genre he mastered in his career-launching Evil Dead movies and 2009’s Drag Me to Hell, with Send Help, Raimi pivots to a Castaway-style survival thriller, filtered through his distinctly delirious lens.

Send Help stars Rachel McAdams as Linda Liddle, an overworked middle manager at a Fortune 500 company. Underappreciated by her boss and disliked by her coworkers, Linda spends her nights alone at home watching Survivor with her pet bird. To make matters worse, Linda’s frat-bro co-worker Donovan (Xavier Samuel) keeps stealing credit for her work. And when the boss’s son, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) takes over the business, he deprives Linda of the promotion his dad promised her, and elevates his........

© Polygon