We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
SEND HELP (2026)
In October of 2019, Sony Pictures announced that Sam Raimi was set to direct a horror film (eventually to be known as Send Help) for them, working from a screenplay by Freddy vs. Jason and Friday the 13th (2009) writers Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, and I was instantly sold. As a dedicated fan since childhood, I will watch anything Raimi puts his name on, and the fact that Swift and Shannon, writers I had come to like and respect during their time working in my beloved F13 franchise, were working on the script made the project even more appealing.
It took a while for the project to make it into production, and it could have fallen apart at any point. Many did when the pandemic hit. More did when the back-to-back writers and actors strikes happened a couple of years ago. But Send Help endured, even while Raimi went off to work on Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. He circled back to it... and I’m very glad that he did, because the world needs more Sam Raimi horror movies.
For this one, Raimi reteamed with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness cast member Rachel McAdams, who goes against type (at first) to play awkward and homely financial strategist Linda Liddle. Linda’s boss had her expecting a promotion... but that guy has passed away and been replaced as CEO by his jackass son Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien). At first, Linda not only expects to receive a promotion from Bradley, she even seems to think she might score a date with the handsome younger man. But Bradley makes a mockery of her and promotes a frat buddy to the position Linda was gunning for.
Things change in a major way when an international flight on a private plane carrying Bradley, Linda, and a few others goes down in the ocean. Everyone dies... except for Linda and Bradley, who wash up on the shores of a remote island in the Gulf of Thailand. The early pitch described this movie as “Misery meets Cast Away,” and that’s exactly the sort of scenario that plays out on this island. Linda is a survivalist who even has dreams of getting on the TV show Survivor, so she has the skills to live comfortably on this island. Bradley is helpless and injured, so he has to rely on Linda to survive.
The situation gets twisted, especially since it doesn’t take long for the audience to realize that Linda is purposely keeping them stranded on the island. Things also get a bit nasty... and, as you would expect from a Raimi horror movie, it gets gross, with spewing blood and vomit. And that makes for not only a damn good time, but also earned Raimi his first R-rating in 26 years!
Send Help is a really good, entertaining movie about two terrible people, and it’s a great addition to the Raimi filmography. The only thing it’s lacking is an appearance by Raimi’s longtime friend Bruce Campbell, who shows up only in a background painting of Bradley’s late father. Raimi was hoping to get Campbell to make a quick appearance in the movie, but the scheduling didn’t work out.
That’s a shame, but Send Help is awesome nonetheless.
MINDWARP (1991)
Speaking of Bruce Campbell...
Back in the glory days of the ‘80s, Fangoria magazine was the go-to source for horror movie news, so it’s no surprise that they decided to launch their own horror movie production company in the early ‘90s. The plan was to produce one movie per year... but that plan sputtered out after just a few productions, because these Fangoria-produced movies were not on the level of the better movies they covered in the magazine.
Directed by Steve Barnett from a script by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, their first production was Mindwarp – and while they wisely decided to cast Fangoria fan favorites Bruce Campbell and Angus Scrimm in prominent roles, they failed to make the movie they were in very good or interesting. It even has a last-moment twist that might completely ruin your viewing experience if you don’t see it coming a mile away.
The story takes place in a dystopian 2037, by which time most of the world has been reduced to a desert wasteland. A lucky few live in a biosphere called Inworld, where they spend almost their entire lives plugged into virtual reality. Marta Martin plays Judy, a young woman who has grown restless with her virtual reality life. That restlessness causes big trouble for her when she gets through out of Inworld and into the Death Zone inhabited by cannibals called Crawlers.
Judy gets some help from a survivor named Stover (Campbell), but it’s not long before they’re both captured by a tribe of Crawlers headed up by Scrimm’s character. Gory set-pieces, mutant leeches, and disturbing interactions between Judy and Scrimm’s character follow.
Ending aside, Mindwarp is an okay dystopian horror film, but it’s really only worth watching to see Campbell and Scrimm in action... and to decide if the claims that The Matrix was a rip-off of this movie have any basis in reality.
SOMETHING VERY BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN (2026)
A couple of years ago, I was blown away by the fictional classic rock mini-series Daisy Jones & The Six, a show I will definitely be circling back to and writing about someday, after I’ve caught up on the book it was based on. One Daisy Jones cast member I was really impressed by was Camila Morrone – so when it was announced that Morrone was set to star in a Netflix horror series created by Haley Z. Boston and executive produced by the Duffer Brothers, the creators of the hit Netflix genre series Stranger Things, that project – Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen – instantly went on my “to watch” list. And when the show started streaming at the end of March, it turned out to be worth the wait.
The eight-episode series stars Morrone as Rachel Harkin, who is engaged to Nicky Cunningham (Adam DiMarco) and will be marrying him in a week, even though she hasn’t met his family yet. Following a bizarre road trip, Rachel and Nicky reach the secluded Cunningham home out into the wilderness... and Rachel quickly learns that Nicky’s family is quite strange. There’s the dying mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh as Victoria); the distant father who’s obsessed with taxidermy (Ted Levine as Boris), the bitchy sister (Gus Birney as Portia), the douchey brother (Jeff Wilbusch as Jules) who has an odd relationship with his second wife (Karla Crome as Nell), and Jules’ young son (Sawyer Fraser as Jude).
If awkward family interactions, creepy locals, messed-up foxes, missing clothes, strange effigies, and taxidermied creatures weren’t bad enough, Rachel is bombarded with stories about serial killers (like the one Jules claims to have crossed paths with in his youth, the Sorry Man), receives a message warning “Don’t Marry Him,” and has to deal with her mentally disturbed father showing up.
Things are deeply strange from the start, and just keep getting stranger every step up the way. Rachel’s perception of the world shifts in a major way at the midway point of the series – and the viewers’ perception of what’s going on shifts as well. From the beginning, there’s a feeling of dread, as everything is off-kilter. We know something very bad is going to happen. We’ve been promised as much in the title! The midway point is when we find out exactly what might happen... and from there, it’s a ride, with Rachel trying to find a way to avoid a horrific fate with the help of some surprisingly concerned Cunninghams.
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen did kind of sputter out for me a bit in its final episode, but the ending was satisfying enough and I enjoyed the journey to that point. Even if it was annoying that I had to change the settings on my TV to be able to see what was going on - because, like most genre projects these days, the image is ridiculously dark.
Camila Morrone is great in the lead role and was surrounded by a strong supporting cast.
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