Sam Raimi is back and having a bloody good time of it.

Despite Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ flirtations with the genre, it’s been a minute since we’ve witnessed Sam Raimi in full-blown horror mode. To be precise, it’s been a full seventeen years since Drag Me to Hell graced our screens – a film that very much saw Raimi in his element, yet one that remains a horror outlier in a post-Evil Dead filmography that’s seen its fair share of genre hopping and big, shiny studio productions.

It comes as some relief then that after such a long time out of the horror game, Sam Raimi has returned to the well and returned to the genre he made his name with. However, after such an extended period away, does the director still have what it takes to deliver the horror goods and to deliver on the blood-splattered chaos Send Help’s marketing appears to promise?

After surviving a plane crash, two colleagues (Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien) are left stranded on a remote island. With no rescue in sight, the pair are forced to rely on one another to stay alive, despite clashing personalities and buried tensions from their professional past. As the days drag on and resources dwindle, survival becomes as much a psychological battle as a physical one, revealing uncomfortable truths about trust, power, and what people are capable of when pushed to the edge.

After years of mega budget blockbuster fare delivering a mixed bag of quality, it’s fair to say Sam Raimi probably needed to return to his roots to rediscover his mojo. While even with his biggest studio efforts, Raimi’s films have never entirely lost his trademark style and warped sense of humour, so dialling it down and returning to where it all started is a smart move. And while Send Help is far from a barnstorming return to form, at the very least, it’s a film that sees its director having some long overdue fun.

All things considered, Send Help is a movie that’s so within its director’s wheelhouse, it feels rather odd that he hasn’t done anything quite like it before. Two mismatched work colleagues stranded on a tropical island and forced into a bloody head-to-head battle for survival is a setup tailor made for Sam Raimi and, as one might expect, the director runs with it; however, while this serendipitous pairing of director and concept certainly reaps some rewards, there’s also a lot to Send Help that gets lost along the way.

While there’s little doubt that Send Help is a good time, it’s certainly not a great one. In so many ways, the film is a fun, engaging, endearingly goofy survival horror-comedy that has its director’s fingerprints all over it, yet there’s a nagging feeling present throughout that it’s not quite the chaotic Raimi bloodfest you were anticipating.

Like a battered raft caught adrift in a choppy ocean, Send Help is an up and down affair where Raimi’s trademark gnarliness and high-energy humour often bob to the surface, however, just as soon as they arrive, they find themselves back beneath the waves. With one eye on as wide an audience as possible, Send Help often finds itself pulling its punches, with its desire to appeal to a more mainstream demo than your average horror frequently undermining its director’s natural filmmaking instincts.

When you have the likes of Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien as your stars, there’s always going to be a desire to play to their strengths as a pair, and while letting your audience have what they want is perfectly understandable under such circumstances, Send Help spends so long setting them up that it’s plot takes an age to really get going. When their inevitable bloody battle for survival does kick off, the film eventually gets a grip on itself and Raimi (largely) gets to do what he does best, yet it’s such a long wait to get to that point that you can’t help but feel a little disappointed.

The build-up is a fun one and there’s plenty about the odd couple character combo of McAdams’ downtrodden, Survivor-obsessed workhorse and O’Brien’s lazy corporate douchebag rubbing one another up the wrong way to keep things interesting, yet it takes such a long time to build to anything, the eventual payoff never feels worth the wait. Sam Raimi films have always had a large helping of twisted humour to them, and that’s certainly present and correct here, however, as fun as it is, it only takes you so far, especially when the horror side of things never quite backs it up.

As a generous helping of silly, slapstick horror, Send Help is actually rather effective and if you go with it, the film has a lot to offer as a piece of knockabout horror-tinged fun that doesn’t take itself too seriously. What it doesn’t really offer, however, is the kind of all-out survival bloodbath it frequently promises, which leaves it falling disappointingly short of what one might expect from a Sam Raimi horror film.

There are certainly moments throughout Send Help’s third act that come remarkably close to letting rip and delivering the kind of gnarly horror we’ve been waiting so long for from Sam Raimi, yet every time it comes close to following through, it pulls back. Even as the action hots up and McAdams’ Linda and O’Brien’s Bradley are fully at one another’s throats as the insanity of the situation digs in, there remains a lingering sense that the film is never quite taking things as far as it could.

For their part, both Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien are clearly fully invested in the film as they positively fling themselves into it, but while their enthusiasm for the desert island shenanigans that unfold offers a great deal of energy and endeavour, it’s hard to shake the feeling that they, like their director, never quite follow through with the premise. McAdams is as likeable and magnetic as ever, while O’Brien is a lot of fun as a dickhead corporate bro, yet there’s something missing there that holds Send Help back from reaching its full potential.

As a good time rather than a great one, Send Help is an immensely fun horror-tinged survival duel with moments of classic Sam Raimi gnarliness and high energy humour to keep things bobbing along, however, these snippets of greatness are often washed away almost as quickly as they arrive, as the film constantly feels caught between pleasing mainstream audiences and the all-out horror chaos it promises. For their part, McAdams and O’Brian make for a great pairing and carry Send Help a long way, yet there’s always a nagging feeling that they, like their director, are pulling their punches.

Send Help is in cinemas now.