You don’t need to be a hardcore fan of Sam Raimi to suppose Ship Assist is a good movie, nevertheless it helps.
The distinctive abilities of the person answerable for Evil Useless II, the primary three Spider-Man films and Drag Me to Hell are on full show and completely deployed on this survivalist thriller: Cameras racing round from the angle of a wild boar. Shut-ups so obscene they flip human faces into gross abstractions. And much, and much, and many extraordinarily colourful fluids purged, sprayed or splattered on his lead actors. There’s no director likelier to elicit hysterical laughter and full disgust from the identical second, and Raimi delivers these moments with the frequency and precision of planes ready behind one another on a runway.
Greater than merely the second actually nice style movie of 2026 in a matter of weeks, Ship Assist is an S.O.S. from a bygone period of filmmaking the place a little bit little bit of star wattage elevated an incredible thought right into a generational touchstone. (Followers of movies like Romancing the Stone or Joe Versus the Volcano, who like issues extra bitter than candy, will discover a lot to take pleasure in right here.) The story of an workplace drone stranded on a abandoned island along with her overprivileged boss, Raimi’s newest marks a flamboyant return to the highs of his earlier, authentic (i.e. non-franchise) work. Enjoying the movie’s two most essential characters, Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien ship fearlessly gag-inducing performances that flip their battle for survival into a wonderful battle of wills.
Sam Raimi’s Three Stooges-Meets-Splatter Sensibility Prospers
McAdams (Recreation Night time) performs Linda Liddle, a vital however underappreciated cubicle dweller at a consulting agency the place Bradley Preston (O’Brien, Twinless) is ready to inherit the mantle of CEO from his late father. Regardless of guarantees for development from his predecessor, Bradley is sort of actually repulsed by Linda’s dowdy look, the tuna-salad-sandwich lunches consumed at her desk, and her aptitude for talking in motivational-speaker clichés. However when Bradley realizes how useful her firm information may very well be in closing an enormous deal, he invitations her alongside to affix his new govt staff, comprised of faculty buddies and like-minded bros, on a global journey.
En path to the enterprise assembly, their non-public aircraft crashes into the ocean. Linda and Bradley are the one survivors, though Bradley sustains an harm that retains him off his toes. Fortunately, Linda was a Survivor hopeful in her civilian life, so she possesses greater than sufficient talent and information to arrange camp, forage for sustenance and look after his wounds. After already humiliating her — a number of instances — whereas within the workplace collectively, Bradley’s silver-spoon entitlement additional rubs her the incorrect means as she realizes that hers is the extra useful talent set in an untamed tropical panorama. With no different choices, they reluctantly comply with preserve and look after each other, however residual resentments, and new lies, shortly threaten that tenuous peace.
Although Ship Assist was brilliantly written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (the terrific 2009 reboot of Friday the thirteenth), Sam Raimi’s sixteenth function feels prefer it sprung from the filmmaker’s personal mischievous creativity in a lot the identical means as his earlier style masterpieces. Although the movie by no means lacks coronary heart (and actually his capability to squeeze sentiment out of those situations has solely grown additional refined), Raimi’s priorities as soon as once more appear to be centered round staging creative, brutal, hilarious motion sequences whereas his cameramen match the freak of his eager-to-please actors like an off-screen Ginger Rogers. McAdams and O’Brien go to unhinged locations with their characters that we’ve by no means seen of their earlier work, and Raimi ensures that we see each (actually) gory element with the identical affection he clearly has for his or her efforts.
Rachel McAdams Well Resists Making Linda Too Likable
With all due respect to O’Brien, the movie is de facto McAdams’ present, much less due to how we’re meant to sympathize with Linda for being neglected and minimized by the boy’s-club assholes in cost than the actress’ willingness to check our help of her. Regardless of the character’s demonstrable competency, her poor studying of social cues and infinite string of inspirational platitudes nearly immediately make her unbearable — the type of particular person whose make it easier to’d be grateful to get however would by no means need to get a beer with afterward to rejoice. It’s a really skillful selection that McAdams doesn’t downplay, as a result of it makes her a barely extra ambiguous heroine reverse the plain villainy of the moneyed dickhead reverse Linda who’s clearly by no means been informed no.
That Linda’s insularity as a personality makes being stranded on an island such a scrumptious prospect — and furthermore, one she’s overprepared to efficiently discover — injects a further cost into the dynamic that outcomes from her taking cost over a boss extra accustomed to giving orders than receiving. Her transformation on the island, her pores and skin glowing and beachy curls bouncing, appears unlikely however McAdams makes us consider it as a result of it looks like the primary state of affairs the place Linda’s optimistic considering and survivalist expertise aren’t merely accepted however thought of important.
As convincingly as O’Brien embraces Bradley’s white man’s entitlement and presumption that Linda will immediately capitulate to the chain of command from again within the enterprise world, he’s burdened with a personality who (perhaps rightly) can by no means be totally empathized with. Consequently, even when info is revealed that may humanize him, or extra importantly, put cracks in Linda’s altruistic facade, it’s arduous to do greater than suppose “he nonetheless in all probability deserves to be left for lifeless.” That mentioned, O’Brien makes himself the consummate heel over and over, incomes together with his vanity each indignity, gross or painful, that Bradley receives.
Raimi, in the meantime, looks like a child in a sweet retailer, discovering one cause after one other to beat the pulp out of his actors, or blast them within the face with more and more unpleasant-looking substances — vomit, blood, bug guts, you identify it. He treads a path that’s imply however not merciless, and it makes the film joyful and enjoyable even when it’s depicting actions which might be gritty and intense. Raimi’s return to kind feels just like the type of film that was made all the time: an incredible, harmful, humorous, scary journey, although as an alternative of with inevitable lovers, that includes individuals who largely can’t stand each other. A real rarity, Ship Assist feels contemporary and distinctive — a lot, the truth is, it’s arduous to resolve whether or not you need Raimi (or anyone else, for that matter) to make extra films prefer it, or let it alone, thriving on a far-off island the place nobody can compromise its singular, idiosyncratic perfection.
Ship Assist
9/10
- Launch Date
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January 30, 2026
- Runtime
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113 Minutes
- Director
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Sam Raimi
- Writers
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Damian Shannon, Mark Swift