What’s a Sam Raimi horror film without a little (or, a lot of) goo? Just ask The Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell, or Drag Me To Hell’s Alison Lohman. Even Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness gave us a giant impaled eye-monster, and Elizabeth Olsen’s mind-warped Wanda Maximoff doused in android entrails. As the legendary filmmaker returns with his first horror movie in 17 years, Send Help, fear not: he hasn’t forgotten how to do splatter.
The film stars Dylan O’Brien and Rachel McAdams as horrible boss Bradley Preston, and long-suffering, overlooked-for-promotion employee Linda Liddle, respectively. When the pair crash on a desert island, the tables are turned in a battle for survival. Safe to say, things get gooey – filming saw Raimi “throwing vomit in Dylan’s face. Throwing blood in Rachel’s face, throwing water in her face, poking her with sticks,” the director recalls. “Okay, yeah, I might have poked her with a stick once.” For the cast, getting pelted with movie-prop goop by Sam Raimi himself is something of a badge of honour. “Puke in the face, yeah,” says O’Brien of one of the gunks. “It was mangoes that looked like berries, but I guess it was mango.”
And it really had to be Raimi himself in control of the fluids. “He will not allow anyone else to be the gunk-thrower,” confirms McAdams. It’s a responsibility that takes practice and dedication. “I thought he was kidding the first time, when he threw a bucket of water in my face, when the plane goes into the water. Nope! He takes his job very seriously. He practises. He rehearses.” Exactly how much blood was pelted at McAdams’ face, then? “A lot, a lot, a lot,” she says. “He’d say, ‘More! That’s not enough!’ We’re like, ‘You’re getting greedy now.’ Like, any sane person would know that there’s a lot of blood.” Send help indeed.
Read Empire’s full feature on Send Help – speaking to Sam Raimi, Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien about the legendary director’s horror comeback – in the Lord Of The Rings 25th anniversary reunion issue, on newsstands from Thursday January 15. Send Help comes to UK cinemas from February 6.
