Rachel McAdams in Send HelpImage via 20th Century Studios
By
Chris Williams
Published Jan 31, 2026, 8:00 PM EST
Chris Williams is a writer with more than 20 years of experience writing about film.
He began his career working as a reporter for the Advisor and Source Newspapers in Shelby Township, Michigan, where he also served as the resident film critic. He has also written for Patheos and CinemaNerdz. Since 2020, Chris has written the Chrisicisms newsletter, which features reviews of recent film releases and thoughts on a variety of subjects.
Chris holds a B.A. in communications and an emphasis in journalism and an M.A. in communications with an emphasis on media arts and studies, both from Wayne State University in Detroit.
He lives in the Detroit area with his wife and his son and daughter.
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Sam Raimi’s decision to cast Rachel McAdams in Send Help traces directly back to working with her on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, where she played multiple variations of Christine Palmer. In a recent Reddit AMA, Raimi described being struck by how precisely McAdams calibrated each version. When reshoots introduced yet another iteration of the character, she adjusted again. That mix of control and adaptability convinced Raimi that McAdams was an actor he could build a movie around.
That instinct proves spot-on in Raimi’s first horror film in nearly two decades. McAdams stars as Linda Liddle, an overlooked office worker stranded on a deserted island with her toxic boss after a plane crash. Raimi leans hard into his signature excess — including slapstick brutality, grotesque gore, and escalating violence — but the film never collapses under its own weight because McAdams anchors the madness to something recognizably human.
McAdams Grounds ‘Send Help’ While Still Letting Raimi Go Wild
Rachel McAdams in Send HelpImage via 20th Century Studios
Raimi has always thrived when paired with actors willing to endure punishment; it’s what made his collaborations with Bruce Campbell in the Evil Dead films and Allison Lohman in Drag Me to Hell so memorable. McAdams fits squarely into that tradition. She’s fully game for the physical and tonal extremes Send Help demands, whether she’s covered in pig blood, vomiting strange fruits, or spending the film’s final act in a manic state that borders on cartoonish. But she also brings an emotional intelligence that maintains viewer sympathy and grounds Linda as a real, if deeply troubled, character.
In the office, Linda is anxious and deferential, conditioned by years of belittlement from male bosses, particularly Bradley (Dylan O’Brien), with whom she’s stranded. She maintains a cheery facade and clings to positive thinking as a survival tactic. When she chastises herself for crying after an embarrassing moment, McAdams makes it feel real. But Linda is also a Survivor fanatic, and being stranded on the island triggers her resourcefulness and defiance, eventually spiraling into something darker. McAdams willingly goes big for Raimi, especially in the final passages, where Linda is willing to kill to preserve the balance she’s found. Yet she never loses sight of the character’s humanity. A quiet fireside confession about Linda’s failed marriage becomes a crucial pivot point, fleshing her out just enough to make her eventual unraveling feel earned rather than sensational.
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Posts By Adam BlevinsThis is the same skill Raimi admired on Doctor Strange: McAdams’ ability to play variations on a character with precision and empathy. And the arc from meek to resourceful is one she showed for another horror titan, Wes Craven, back in Red Eye. But here, those shifts aren’t explained away by multiversal hijinks or the threat of imminent violence. Linda is a real person shaped by trauma and mistreatment. Under pressure, she becomes someone new, and McAdams tracks those changes without breaking the character’s core.
McAdams Holds the Center of Sam Raimi’s Chaos
Raimi’s direction in Send Help is unapologetically aggressive, as it tends to be. The film veers between survival thriller, pitch-black comedy, sitcom-style absurdity, and gross-out horror, often within the same sequence. It’s a tonal balancing act that could easily tip into incoherence. Raimi understands how much he needs McAdams as the film’s throughline; her versatility allows him to keep escalating without losing the audience.
With that core intact, and O’Brien serving as an effective foil whose motives remain murky, Raimi spins Send Help in multiple directions, channeling the energy of Evil Dead and Drag Me to Hell through psychological and physical danger rather than the supernatural. His camera hurtles through the jungle as a boar stalks Linda. The hunt ends in a gory punchline. Visual gags build around Linda’s improbable island ingenuity, with her inventions just on the right side of Gilligan’s Island. Raimi pushes her through moral quandaries and jump-scare nightmares before delivering a finale that feels part-Evil Dead, part-Looney Tunes. Throughout it all, McAdams goes wherever he needs without sacrificing emotional truth. She’s been great before, particularly in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, but the skill required to keep Linda human amid Raimi’s hurricane-like direction should not be underestimated.
McAdams and Raimi Should Work Together Again
By the time the film reaches its most extreme stretches, Linda has become a mirror of the movie itself: unpredictable, volatile, and impossible to look away from. McAdams makes that transformation coherent and empathetic, which is no small feat in a film this merciless. It’s the kind of performance that reminds audiences why Raimi, decades into his career, still gets excited about discovering the right collaborator. Hopefully, they’ll find a way to work together again.
Subscribe for deeper Raimi and McAdams film insight
Get richer context on Raimi, McAdams, and Send Help by subscribing to our newsletter—receive in-depth film analysis, behind-the-scenes perspectives, and broader movie coverage that sharpens your understanding of modern genre filmmaking. Subscribe By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept Valnet’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.Send Help works as well as it does because Raimi found an actor who could keep up with his madness and sharpen it at the same time. Watching McAdams navigate shifting tones, escalating violence, and psychological collapse with such assurance, it’s easy to see why Raimi knew back on Doctor Strange that she was the one he wanted to build his next nightmare around.
Send Help is now playing in theaters.
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Send Help
Like Follow Followed R Thriller Comedy Release Date January 30, 2026 Runtime 113 Minutes Director Sam Raimi Writers Damian Shannon, Mark Swift Producers Sam Raimi, Zainab AziziCast
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Rachel McAdams
Linda
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Dylan O'Brien
Bradley Preston
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Send Help
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