Fuzzy Mushroom › Films of 2026 › Send Help
Spore Score: 77/100 · The Pros: 82 · The Punters: 69 · 4 sources
Released 30 January 2026.
Worth a watch. Spore Score 77/100. The Pros rate it 13 points higher than The Punters.
By Fuzzy Mushroom · Updated 13 November 2026 · The Pros 82 · The Punters 69 · Spore Score 77 · How we write our takes
Send Help is a film critics enjoyed a little more than audiences. The Pros give it 82, The Punters 69, and the Spore Score is 77, with a fuzzy tag. The 13-point gap comes down to tone. Sam Raimi mixes office comedy, survival thriller and gory horror in the same film, and critics who know his work had fun with the swings. Some viewers expected either a straight thriller or a straight comedy and found the mix harder to settle into.
Raimi directed and produced this black comedy from a script by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. 20th Century Studios released it in American cinemas on 30 January 2026. Rachel McAdams plays Linda, an overlooked corporate strategist who has just been passed over for a promotion, and Dylan O'Brien plays Bradley, her smug new boss. When their plane goes down on a business trip, the two of them are the only survivors, stranded on a remote island where Linda's love of survival shows suddenly makes her the one in charge. Dennis Haysbert, Xavier Samuel and Edyll Ismail co-star.
The set-up is simple and satisfying: the person everyone ignored at work turns out to be the only one who can keep them alive. McAdams clearly relishes a part that moves from awkward and put-upon to something much darker, and O'Brien is good value as a boss who keeps underestimating her. Raimi brings his old Evil Dead energy to the nastier moments, with splashy, slapstick violence.
The film runs close to two hours, and the middle stretch on the island repeats the same power struggle a few times. The jumps between comedy and cruelty can be jarring, and characters make choices that are hard to sympathise with.
Fans of Sam Raimi's horror comedies, anyone who enjoys revenge-on-the-boss stories, and viewers who like their thrillers with a mean sense of humour.
Worth a watch, with a Spore Score of 77. A nasty, funny two-hander with a terrific Rachel McAdams performance, best enjoyed if you know it is going to get gruesome.
Send Help is a 2026 film directed by Sam Raimi. Genres: Horror.
| Site | Side | Site score | Adjusted /100 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CinemaScore | The Punters (audiences) | B+ | 69 |
| IMDb | The Punters (audiences) | 6.7/10 | 69 |
| Rotten Tomatoes | The Pros (critics) | 92% | 86 |
| Metacritic | The Pros (critics) | 75/100 | 80 |
The Pros' sites said 80, adjusted to 82; The Punters' sites said 71, adjusted to 69. Every review site has habits: some score high, some low, some bunch everything in the middle. We measure each site's habit across thousands of films and iron it out, so a 7/10 from a generous site and a 7/10 from a harsh one aren't treated the same. Then critics and audiences each get one figure, and the Spore Score sits between them. How the Spore Score works.
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