Rachel McAdams is currently in talks to play the lead role in Sam Raimi’s new thriller Send Help, and it’ll mark her first appearance in a horror film in 19 years. Send Help has been described as a cross between the Tom Hanks survival drama Cast Away and the Stephen King novel Misery, so it sounds like it’ll be a psychological horror two-hander set on a remote island. This will be Raimi’s first straightforward horror movie since 2009’s supernatural chiller Drag Me to Hell, as he’s focused on big-budget franchise installments since then.

Raimi first signed on to direct and produce the movie in July, and with casting underway, cameras could be rolling pretty soon.

Sam Raimi's Send Help Is Rachel McAdams' First Horror Movie Since 2005

McAdams' Last Horror Movie Was Red Eye

If she ends up landing the lead role, Send Help will be McAdams’ first horror movie since she played Lisa Reisert in Red Eye back in 2005. Like Send Help, Red Eye was the work of a renowned horror auteur (A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Wes Craven), and like Send Help, Red Eye was a two-handed psychological thriller. McAdams’ Lisa is a hotel manager on a red-eye flight to Miami and the guy sitting next to her, Cillian Murphy’s Jackson Rippner, turns out to be a sadistic terrorist who holds her hostage in an assassination plot.

There were strong horror elements in Raimi and McAdams’ last collaboration, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It had plenty of hair-raising jump scares, like the Scarlet Witch snapping Professor X’s neck, and it utilized horror motifs like zombies, demonic spirits, and a mystical book that controls all the evil in the universe. But ultimately, as a PG-13 superhero movie, the Doctor Strange sequel wasn’t able to really push the boundaries of horror in the way McAdams’ Red Eye and Raimi’s Evil Dead films did. Send Help, on the other hand, will be a full-blown horror movie.

Rachel McAdams' Horror Movie Return Is Much More Exciting Than Red Eye

Sam Raimi's Return To Horror Makes Send Help A Thrilling Prospect

Send Help is a much more exciting horror movie than Red Eye was, because it’s being directed by Raimi. Raimi is one of the most unique voices in horror cinema, bringing a quirky, idiosyncratic sense of humor to some of the goriest imagery ever put on film. Raimi invented a whole new subgenre of surrealist, cartoonish horror with the Evil Dead trilogy, and the fact that he’s returning to scary movies for the first time in 15 years is a tantalizing prospect for horror fans.

Red Eye was also directed by a legendary horror filmmaker with Craven at the helm. But it wasn’t the gonzo Craven who made The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left, and The People Under the Stairs. It wasn’t even the tongue-in-cheek satirist Craven who made Scream and New Nightmare. Red Eye was the work of a disappointingly restrained Craven working within the confines of a PG-13 rating. Raimi has proven with the grisly thrills of Drag Me to Hell and Multiverse of Madness that even if Send Help is rated PG-13, it’ll still be a wild ride.

Sam Raimi Could Help Turn Rachel McAdams Into A Major Horror Movie Star

Raimi Could Give McAdams The Bruce Campbell Treatment

Under Raimi’s direction, McAdams could become the next major scream queen. In recent years, a lot of famous movie stars have become icons in the horror genre, like Toni Collette with Hereditary or Demi Moore with The Substance. McAdams could follow in their footsteps with the lead role in Send Help. Raimi is one of the most revered horror directors in Hollywood, so his return to the genre is already a big deal — and McAdams is a great actor, so she’ll surely turn in a terrific performance.

Raimi is one of the most revered horror directors in Hollywood, so his return to the genre is already a big deal — and McAdams is a great actor, so she’ll surely turn in a terrific performance.

Raimi is already responsible for bringing one of the horror genre’s most beloved mainstays into the spotlight when he cast childhood friend Bruce Campbell to star in his low-budget indie debut feature The Evil Dead in 1981. Campbell has continued to reprise the role of Ash Williams in sequels, spin-offs, and TV shows in the years since. If Send Help is just half as great as The Evil Dead, Rachel McAdams could get the Campbell treatment and become a new titan of the horror genre.