Sam Raimi is an undeniable horror icon, and it’s based in a big way on his earliest efforts, including his Evil Dead trilogy. He went on to spread his directorial wings in varied ways with a killer western (The Quick and the Dead), a compelling baseball drama (For the Love of the Game), an acclaimed superhero trilogy, and more.
His last pure horror film was 2009’s Drag Me to Hell – pure horror with a heavy dose of black humor – and his latest isn’t about to change that. Send Help is a darkly comic thriller and a fun time despite some fairly rough CG. I’m not against its use in general, but it just stands out so much in a film set almost entirely outside in nature.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the 2026 commentary for…
Send Help (2026)
Commentators: Sam Raimi (director), Zainab Azizi (producer)
1. “I always loved the power and the majesty of the great 20th Century Fox logo,” says Raimi, and while he says the new 20th Century Studios one is “very good,” he really wanted a return to the older style. They created this one and petitioned the studio to let them use it. Azizi adds that it wasn’t easy getting that approval.
2. Linda Liddle’s (Rachel McAdams) shoes were nicknamed “the mules” on set.
3. McAdams had “a tremendous amount of input” in regard to every aspect of her character, from her wardrobe and appearance to the production design of her cubicle. Her grandmother had a pet bird and would share toast with it every night, so McAdams even incorporated that into her character, which required the animal trainer to teach Linda’s little bird to nibble on toast when offered.
4. Linda’s coworker, River, is played by Raimi’s daughter, Emma Raimi. His son, Lorne Raimi, is 2nd Unit Director on the film, too.
5. McAdams wore varying degrees of padding to make her look frumpy and unappealing to idiots. Early scenes had her in “stage one” thickness; later island scenes drop her to stage two, and it’s all gone by the time she hits the waterfall at 41:33.
6. Raimi’s infamous Delta 88 Oldsmobile – the classic car that has cameoed in his movies – appears in the parking garage at 15:03. “Well,” adds Raimi, “it is and it isn’t.” He says the original is “hidden somewhere in the United States” because “Bruce Campbell, my good buddy, has threatened to destroy it.” True or not, this is a stand-in used here.
7. They couldn’t afford to put the plane set on a gimbal – a big frame that allows a set to be moved in 360 degrees – so they resorted to using airbags to rock the plane’s interior side to side. Once it hits the water, the plane’s shell is actually being lowered into a train car filled with water.
8. The beach scenes were filmed in Phuket, Thailand, alongside a coconut grove. They had to remove all the coconuts from the trees beforehand to avoid injury or death from falling coconuts. Raimi makes *a lot* of jokes throughout the commentary, but this is not one of them. “For me it would be a very embarrassing way to go.”
9. The script originally featured a scene with a large coconut crab “the size of a small child” crawling towards Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) on the beach. They cut it for both cost and creative reasons.
10. They used a boar puppet on a wheelbarrow while filming the boar hunt scene as a way to give McAdams something to react to. Audiences, unfortunately, are stuck with the iffy CG effects that replaced it.
11. Raimi personally splashed blood onto McAdams’ face during the boar kill scene.
12. Azizi recalls the best description she saw of O’Brien’s laughter in the film is that he “has laughs in every font.”
13. Live sound recording was obviously difficult while filming on the beach due to everything from the waves to the wind to cicadas in the trees. “With the modern AI tools,” says Raimi, failing to read the room, “we were really able to clean up those tracks.”
14. “No animals were harmed on set,” says Raimi as a Thai water bug appears at 48:39. It’s real as it crawls along the rock, but it’s swapped for an edible treat with kicking CG legs. “I’m told by Dylan that it actually tasted like a meringue pie.”
15. Linda’s sushi spread is actually strips of lychee fruit. Azizi corrects Raimi’s pronunciation, and he reminds her that he’s a member of the California Rare Fruit Grower’s Society.
16. Linda helps nature by roasting some green bananas, and they appear to love the result. Raimi, having just learned about this from the script, tried impressing his girlfriend with the trick, but the end result was disgusting. “Don’t follow this film if you want to impress your girlfriend,” he says. “It doesn’t work.”
17. It was important that they kept track of the moral/human standing of the two leads. Linda is obviously the pure protagonist from the start, with Bradley being a smarmy villain, but there’s a shift that happens around the one-hour mark as the two talk by the fire. Viewers start opening up to him as he talks about his upbringing, and at the same time they’re starting to doubt Linda, knowing that she’s intentionally avoiding rescue. “That was a brilliant thing about the script that we really embraced, which was switching audience identification from Linda and Bradley.” The goal at that point was to somehow switch that loyalty back again by the time the end credits roll. They think they succeed, and your mileage may vary, but I’m of the opinion that she ends the film as a villain, as she killed two innocent people, Zuri (Edyll Ismail) and the boat captain (Thaneth Warakulnukroh).
18. “I hate to speak as another know-it-all,” says Raimi, “but I am also a member of the California Junior Winemakers Club.” He points out that making wine takes a lot longer than the two days mentioned by Linda here. To that end, they did shoot a scene at the house with Linda pouring vodka into her bamboo flask, but it was cut from the flashbacks.
19. A spider web with creepy arachnids is seen in the cave at 1:05:33, and they want it known it’s not a reference to Spider-Man. Instead, the CG shot was added in post-production because test audiences rightfully pointed out that Linda and Bradley should just be using the dry, warm cave as their base camp.
20. This scene still makes me sick,” says Azizi as Linda vomits onto Bradley’s face… four times. Raimi blames his editor, Bob Murawski, saying he has “a fascination with things coming out of people’s mouths.” Mmhmm.
21. They began pitching the film back in 2019, and Azizi recalls one executive saying they were “crazy” to include the scene with Linda poisoning/paralyzing Bradley with the octopus meal and then pretending to castrate him. “They were right,” replies Raimi.
22. The shot starting at 1:27:28 was performed in reverse to give Zuri’s rise and shambling walk an “EC Comics” feel.
23. The film’s writers, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, described the fight between Linda and Bradley at 1:33:00 as “a feral fight, not one that you would see in a Marvel film.”
24. One of the reasons they filmed in Thailand, aside from the gorgeous location and incredibly kind people, was the tax incentive granted if they helped promote the country in the film. Linda’s line about there being “a frozen Massaman curry” in the freezer at 1:36:30: “and that counted as one of the boxes to check off.” The house the scene occurs within was located in Sydney, Australia.
25. An aside, but I will never understand Hollywood accounting. This is a studio production that filmed in Thailand, Australia, and elsewhere with two major stars, but they say they couldn’t afford things like fancy loafers for Bradley (the costume department had to fabricate some instead) or to tent the outside of the house in order to pretend it’s nighttime (they instead had to film the interiors on a tight nighttime schedule). I mean, they went to the Dominican Republic and South Africa to shoot a few minutes of beach/jungle footage! I don’t get it.
26. Raimi’s old assistant, J.R. Young, is now the Senior Vice President of Production at 20th Century Studios, which technically makes him Raimi’s boss now. “Like in the movie.”
27. Azizi thanks the writers for the script and asks them to hurry up on the sequel.
Quotes Without Context
“Americans use Vegemite all the time; we just have another name for it. Motor oil.”
“How do you make the most beautiful actress in Hollywood into Linda Liddle?”
“I don’t want to brag, but I am a member of the California Rare Fruit Grower’s Society.”
“Now you’re glad you bought this DVD. You learned something, kid.”
“The audience is always smarter than I give them credit for, except in the case of this audience that’s paid money for the DVD.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
