Raimi's horror comeback bathes the screen in blood

'Send Help' marks a triumphant return to gore, offering not just bodily fluids but righteous rage, says Clarisse Loughrey

- Clarisse Loughrey

Sam Raimi's first horror movie since 2009's Drag Me to Hell happily fulfils its goop quota. Stars Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien find themselves, at various points, drenched in vomit, burst eyeball, bug innards, fish innards, and, of course, several power showers’ worth of splattered blood.

Send Help is another “eat the rich” parable, in which nepo baby CEO Bradley Preston (O’Brien) and Linda Liddle (McAdams), the employee he cruelly passed over for promotion, end up as castaways on the same Thai beach. Yet it’s been told with enough wit and viscera to outpace many of its competitors.

Granted, Raimi’s effectiveness as a filmmaker has been blunted by his over-reliance on digital gore effects. It’s a fairly damning indictment of how little Hollywood invests in its VFX artists, in both money and time, that so many shots here look worse than they did in Drag to Me to Hell (its infamous possessed goat has aged surprisingly well).