Month: February 2026

Send Help

07/02/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

After a somewhat muddled attempt to helm a Marvel film (2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), Sam Raimi heads back into the kind of territory that’s a better fit for his directorial skills. If Send Help initially seems like an odd choice of vehicle, it nonetheless features the kind of perfectly-judged horror tropes that he’s founded his reputation on. And if it’s vaguely reminiscent of JM Barrie’s 1902 play, The Admirable Crichton – with the gender roles reversed – well, that may just be coincidental.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) has worked for years as a strategist for an American financial institution and has become the right-hand woman of the company’s CEO. She’s confidently expecting a hard-earned promotion when his son, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien), takes over the business, but it’s clear from the outset that the smug new boss has a low opinion of Linda with her sensible shoes and her tuna salad sandwiches. He informs her that the role of Vice President will go to his bestie, Donovan (Xavier Samuel), who plays golf with him and knows not to take things too seriously. The fact that Don has even less business acumen than Bradley seems not to bother the latter one jot.

But Bradley is sensible enough to keep Linda on the team for an important trip to Thailand, where he fully expects her to use her skills to finalise the company’s upcoming merger with their Eastern counterparts. On the flight over, Donovan chances on an old audition tape that Linda has made for the survival reality show that she watches in her leisure time. He gleefully shows it to the others. The all-male team take great delight in mocking her ambitions… and then the plane is hit by a sudden storm and suddenly, nobody’s laughing any more.

Come morning, Linda and Bradley are the sole survivors of the crash, stranded on an apparently uninhabited island. Bradley has suffered a leg injury. And the tables are beginning to turn…

Raimi has always had a knack of leavening his horror tropes with well-timed gags and that’s a quality that’s very much to the fore here. The screening I attend is punctuated by gales of laughter and gasps of horror in pretty much equal measure. Okay, so a late stage ‘revelation’ may not be quite the surprise that screenwriters Damon Shannon and Mark Swift were presumably aiming for, but there are nonetheless plenty of other unexpected twists and turns in the narrative that I really don’t see coming.

Both McAdams and O’Brien supply impressively nuanced performances (the film is essentially a two-hander) and, whenever I start to warm to one or the other of them, something happens to push me back in the opposite direction. But the overarching message about toxic masculinity comes through loud and clear and, no matter how devious Linda Liddle becomes, I can’t help rooting for her – even when she’s puking in the face of the person she’s attempting to deliver the kiss of life to.

Raimi aficionados will need to keep a very sharp eye out for the inevitable Bruce Campbell cameo – blink and you’ll surely miss it – but it is there.

Send Help is fast, frenetic and perfectly paced. It’s good to have the veteran director back in the driving seat with his foot on the accelerator.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Primate

01/02/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Walking into an empty auditorium for Primate, we momentarily suppose that we have accidentally wandered into the room where they’re screening Melania. But no, we’re in the right place – and this is horror of an entirely different kind. This low-budget fright film makes no attempt to hide the fact that what we’re being offered here is essentially Cujo with a Chimp – but, that said, I can’t pretend that it doesn’t have me filled with absolute dread throughout its pacy 89-minute run-time.

Which is, I suppose, the object of the exercise.

The action takes place in a fabulously remote mountain retreat in Hawaii, where novelist Adam Pinborough (Troy Kotsur) lives with his young daughter Erin (Gia Hunter) and their ‘pet’ chimpanzee, Ben (performed by Miguel Hernando Torres Umba). Ben’s origins are briefly explained in the film’s opening credits and Adam – who is deaf – utilises a clever piece of kit that allows Ben to communicate by tapping on a screen. But Ben has been behaving strangely of late so, for safety reasons, is locked in his outdoor enclosure. When the ape receives a visit from Dr Doug Lambert (an uncredited Rob Delaney), who has come to administer an injection, the film unflinchingly demonstrates that there’s a very good reason for its 18 certificate.

After the credits, we backtrack thirty-six hours. Adam’s older daughter, Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah), is boarding a plane to make her first home visit in ages. She has been away at college along with her best friend Kate (Victoria Wynant), and they’ve brought their flirty pal, Hannah (Jessica Alexander), along for the ride. Unfortunately, Adam has to travel away from home to attend an important book signing, but he’s happy to let hunky Nick (Benjamin Chang) keep an eye on things during his absence. After all, Ben is safely locked up in his enclosure, so what could possibly go wrong?

To be honest, there’s little point in me mentioning the human characters, because they are nothing more than potential targets for the rabies-infected Ben to convert into piles of blood and bone. But director Johannes Roberts and cinematographer Stephen Murphy handle the film with considerable panache, managing to rack up the suspense to almost unbearable levels. Sometimes it’s all I can do not to yell out warnings at the screen. Even if most of the teenage characters fail to entirely convince, it matters little. The film’s real triumph is that it uses practical effects to deliver its scares and must have been made for a fraction of the budget of your average CGI extravaganza. Ben is utterly believable, despite being nothing more than an actor in an ape suit, utilising a few simple animatronics.

One extended sequence, which plays out in total silence to accentuate the fact that Adam is deaf (and therefore cannot hear any of the carnage that is happening all around him), is particularly inspired. But perhaps the biggest surprise of all is to discover that, despite all those exterior shots of Hawaii, the production was actually based in the UK.

As Primate hits its final scenes, you can’t help wondering about the court case that’s going to ensue, and it’s hard to feel sorry for Adam, who shows no contrition for the deaths that his dangerous ‘pet’ has caused – but then again, he did have hopes that his latest book might be turned into a film, so… it’s not all bad news.

Joking aside, Primate is gnarly stuff. Those of a nervous disposition might prefer to give this one a judicious steer, but for me, it ticks enough boxes to qualify as an entertaining thrill-ride. With added bite.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Is This Thing On?

31/01/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

A man walks into a bar…

Except, it’s not just a bar, it’s a comedy club – and there’s a $15 entrance fee.

Unless you’re there to perform.

It’s been a long and messy night, and Alex Novak (Will Arnett) doesn’t have $15 to hand. But, high on alcohol and edibles, he’s sure his gift of the gab will be enough to get him through a ten-minute open mic spot. Sure enough, although he doesn’t exactly crush it, he does earn a few laughs, and he finds the experience surprisingly therapeutic.

And therapy is just what Alex needs. Recently separated from his wife, Tess (Laura Dern), he’s struggling to cope with living alone in his apartment and being a part-time dad. What’s more, everyone seems convinced that he’s to blame for his marriage breaking down, which he doesn’t think is fair at all. He and Tess have simply grown apart; they’ve split by mutual consent. With friends and family making their disapproval known, the comedy circuit feels like a safe space for Alex to meet people and grapple with his new reality.

Is This Thing On?, directed by Bradley Cooper, is loosely based on the life of British comedian, John Bishop, although the only overt reference to the Merseyside comic is a single scene where Alex sports an incongruous Liverpool FC vest. In his mid-30s, Bishop tried his hand at stand-up while briefly separated from his wife, Melanie; by the time they reconciled, he’d caught the comedy bug and, within a few years, was pursuing a fruitful career as a full-time comic.

Ironically, Bishop’s real-life story is more interesting than the Hollywood version, which is resolutely low-key, and never actually shows us Novak performing a killer gig. In reality, Bishop is hugely successful: he’s a household name in the UK, and his arena tours always sell out. Although Arnett and Dern both perform their roles with consummate skill, there never appears to be much at stake. It would help if we saw Novak’s sets improve, if we could catch a glimpse of the comedic skill that has propelled Bishop into the spotlight.

In addition, the script (co-written by Cooper, Arnett and Mark Chappell) doesn’t flesh out the characters enough: they don’t appear to have lives beyond the scenes we see. We’re told that Novak “works in finance” but we never see the impact of his late-night hobby on his day-job; in fact, he never refers to work at all. He’s a friendly, outgoing character: surely he’d have friends among his colleagues? And the juggling of a demanding job, fatherhood and an all-consuming new passion would make his struggle a lot more compelling.

All in all, this is an enjoyable movie, but not an entirely satisfying one.

3.6 stars

Susan Singfield