What does it mean to survive? There are the immediate needs of course: oxygen, water, food and shelter. Acquiring these essentials is purpose enough for the truly grateful. Throw in a beautiful view and you’ve got it made in the shade. Still, once these primitive needs are met, many and most reach out for more; more purpose, knowledge, tastier food, connection, friendship, love, until it eventually conflates with recognition, power, control and diamond rings. We’re a complicated species with the potential to cooperate, trust, learn and learn the hard way, and director Sam Raimi has a scream, poking us in the eye with this truism amidst his latest and I’d say one of his greatest films to date, Send Help (2026). Linda (Rachel McAdams) is a dizzy, effervescently unpolished, rushing-around, workhorse, bird-lady, singleton who’s confident that her true blue hard work will eventually take her to the top. Bradley (Dylan O’Brian) is her opposite, a nepo baby and her new boss. He saunters about without socks, in fresh, blue swede shoes, and finds Linda, with her bagged lunches, repugnant. Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, they are stranded together on a dessert island in the Gulf of Thailand after their jet goes down en route to an important meeting. The power structure shifts and what each does with their respective skill set leads to a slow burning primal power play. Right and wrong get muddy and Rami, McAdams and Dylan show no mercy as we watch a man and woman do what comes naturally, that is to, once again, mistake their desires with survival. Oh, and it’s hilarious.

WATCH OR NOT: WATCH