Rachel McAdams’s primal scream

Everyone loves Rachel McAdams, right? She’s one of the few who is and always has been universally beloved. She’s so loved, in fact, that many people requested I bring back the Career Prospectus series just for her, because, well, the love has never matched the career, at least not in a long time. Or at least that is how her fans perceive it. 

As I found researching that career prospectus, McAdams took a deliberate step back in the 2000s, turning down some of the biggest films of the decade (Iron Man and The Devil Wears Prada, to name only two), and she moved back to Canada to “stay sane”. But that doesn’t mean her career is in a bad place—it certainly is not, and in the last few years, especially, it feels like McAdams is working to please herself and having a lot of fun doing it.

Her latest is a survival horror-thriller with THE Sam Raimi called Send Help. It co-stars Dylan O’Brien—who is also on a hot streak, he’s TERRIFIC in Twinless this year—and they play a toxic boss (O’Brien) and his downtrodden employee (McAdams) stranded on a desert island together. This emergency changes their dynamic and it looks like things get pretty twisted on the island. So it’s like the third act of Triangle of Sadness with Rachel McAdams primal screaming her way through the trailer.

It looks great, because it’s Sam F-cking Raimi and he rarely misses. Lainey thinks Send Help looks scary, but it looks like a comedy to me. A probably R-rated comedy, sure, but a comedy nonetheless. And again, it’s Sam Raimi, he never really does what you expect, and he rarely makes straight down the middle horror. He made his name in the 80s making horror-comedies like Evil Dead and Army of Darkness. He’s also got a bit of an anti-corporatist streak which tends to show up after he’s done some gun-for-hire work for major studios, and his last film was Marvel’s Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Just saying.

But it’s not just Rachel McAdams and Sam Raimi that has me stoked for Send Help. Put this trailer on the biggest screen you can, turn the sound off, and watch it. Doesn’t it just LOOK great? That’s cinematographer Bill Pope, a longtime collaborator of Raimi’s. But he’s also on speed dial with The Wachowskis, lensing their films Bound and The Matrix trilogy; and Edgar Wright has been calling Bill Pope since 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Even the misfires Pope is involved in are visually interesting failures, like Frank Miller’s The Spirit and Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel. Bill Pope lensing a desert island movie for Sam Raimi is an automatic must-see in my book. Rachel McAdams is the cherry on top. 

Naturally, no one knows what to do with movies like Send Help anymore, so it’s coming out in January. In this case, though, I am slightly less worried about that unforgiving release date because horror movies almost always deliver, especially in the winter. Between the appeal of Sam Raimi—and Bill Pope—Rachel McAdams, a sun-soaked horror/probable comedy in the dead of winter actually sounds pretty nice. Sign me up.