Director Sam Raimi‘s new film, Send Help, retained its box office crown over the relatively quiet Super Bowl weekend. The movie also managed to recoup its reported budget in under two weeks of release, and is heading for a solid total worldwide. Send Help, which stars Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, nearly didn’t get a theatrical release at all, but Raimi persisted. It probably also helped that he had delivered numerous blockbusters in his career, earning studios billions at the box office. Send Help marks Raimi’s return to horror, the genre with which he’s most closely associated, after a gap of over 15 years. His last horror movie was the critically acclaimed Drag Me to Hell, which also proved a box office hit. It’s still early days, but Send Help has already overtaken one of the genre’s all-time classics at the worldwide box office.

Send Help follows two colleagues who are stranded on an island together after a plane crash and forced to deal with their resentments. The movie holds a “Certified Fresh” 93% critics’ score and an equally impressive 87% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The aggregator website’s consensus reads, “Putting director Sam Raimi’s penchant for diabolical mayhem to great use, Send Help doesn’t need any assistance in thrills thanks to a very game Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien along with a viciously clever script.” In his review, Collider’s Aidan Kelley praised the film’s “wacky” camp qualities and wrote, “Rather than being a straight-on thriller or a high-octane horror (though those elements are all certainly still present), Send Help is much closer to a dark comedy than anything else.“

Here’s the Movie that ‘Send Help’ Has Overtaken

With nearly $35 million domestically and another $17 million from overseas markets, Send Help‘s global haul now stands at more than $52 million. The movie was produced on a reported budget of $40 million, which means that anything above $80 million should be a decent result, as it’ll likely work on the digital market as well. Raimi and his team can now celebrate overtaking one of the most influential horror films ever made, Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining. Released in 1980 and based on the book of the same name by Stephen King, the movie made $50 million worldwide. The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall, has developed something of a controversial reputation in recent years because of King’s repeated dismissals of its quality andKubrick’s alleged mistreatment of Duvall on set. You can watch The Shining at home, and Send Help in theaters. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

Release Date

January 30, 2026

Runtime

113 Minutes

Director

Sam Raimi

Writers

Damian Shannon, Mark Swift