You are reading the twenty-fifth edition of Field Notes From Hell, a weekly horror column from Deep Cuts.
Each week, I send out an email with three-pack horror film recs, along with a hand-picked curation of news clips and upcoming horror releases. I recommend three horror films: one recently released, one classic horror, and one that I feel is unjustly overlooked. I send these emails — or I try to, anyway — every Sunday.
This week’s featured horror rec is Sam Raimi’s Send Help, an uproarious, campy thriller about getting stranded on an island with a horrible boss.
JEFF PROBST WOULDN’T KNOW what to do with Linda Liddle. She’s wide-eyed yet scrappy, highly capable and a workhorse, and like the rest of the world, is a Deshawn stan. Her gangly exterior suggests she’d fit in with the David tribe, but she’s got Herculean strengths fit for a Goliath. There’s a netherworld of violence and cruelty inside her, dormant, just waiting for the right mix of nepo-douchery and haughtiness to poke it out of sleep.
Probst wouldn’t know this just from watching Linda’s audition tape, which the film cleverly uses for marketing. Bradley Preston, a trust fund kid taking over the reigns of an American conglomerate, doesn’t know it either, or he wouldn’t have cackled at Linda’s tape mere moments from his private jet crash-landing in the Gulf of Thailand. When he wakes, he sees Linda, a bona fide survivalist, literally decapitating a wild boar. There in the office, she’s the constantly stepped-over assistant; here in the island, she’s the boss. Abigail from Triangle of Sadness would be proud.
Send Help is a supremely enjoyable thriller that depicts — in often gruesome and funny ways — the natural order of things. It’s survival of the fittest in a world seemingly fit only for the deranged. Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, who plays Linda and Bradley, respectively, get to have fun with this a lot (McAdams, especially!), and the film kind of hinges on their live wire but nuanced performances.
Then there’s the Sam Raimi of things. Few filmmakers will make movies like this today, where their love for cinema almost perspires through the screen and audio system. The film feels positively Y2K in its audiovisual flourishes (and the jump scares? *chef’s kiss*, just…brings me back!), and it’s truly a gift to see a Raimi film getting this much love in the big ‘26. The denouement can kinda feel like ‘huh?’ but the film brings it back at the end.
ABOUT THE FILM
🏝️ Send Help | 2026 dir. Sam Raimi | Horror, Thriller, Comedy | 🇺🇸
Two colleagues become stranded on a deserted island, the only survivors of a plane crash. On the island, they must overcome past grievances and work together to survive, but ultimately, it’s a battle of wills and wits to make it out alive.
Horror recs this week
Every FIELD NOTES FROM HELL dispatch includes a three-pack of horror recs: 1.) a featured horror rec we share at the top of the newsletter, 2.) a horror classic, and 3.) an overlooked or underrated horror.
🎞️ Classic Horror: The Fog (1980, dir. John Carpenter)
Stashed somewhere between John Carpenter’s more accomplished work — I’m thinking Halloween and The Thing — is the underrated ‘80s classic, The Fog, a brooding ghost story set during the centennial anniversary of the founding of a coastal town. The Carpenter staples are here: the pulsating synths and the gorgeous, atmospheric visuals. More than a mood piece, The Fog’s eerie sense emits not solely its eponymous mist, but the violence, corruption, and material excess that defined the era.
👀 Overlooked Horror: Triangle (2009, dir. Christopher Smith)
Christopher Smith’s Triangle occupies this strange, largely uncharted pocket of late-aughts’ genre cinema. These films are grounded, cerebral, and often nihilist. Unless you’re actively looking for films like it, you’ll miss it. The film follows young woman trapped in a time loop inside a desolate ocean liner. Melissa George’s performance is key here; her knowledge of what actually goes down unravels in lockstep with the film’s recursive structure, and it’s one of the first films I’ve seen that truly whipped my head so hard into a doozy.
What’s new in horror
In addition to weekly horror recs, I’m also curating notable horror headlines and sharing them here in quick, TL;DR bullet lists so you can get (mostly) up-to-date with your horror news.
Plus, I’m calling attention to any upcoming horror film and TV releases both in theaters and streaming platforms. Here’s what’s new in horror this week.
🩸 If It Bleeds…: Weekly horror news roundup
James Wan and Leigh Whannell want to make another Saw film, one that captures the spirit of the 2004 original — Letterboxd
Eli Roth is remaking the ‘90s cult classic,Ice Cream Man, and it’s going to be crazier than all his previous films — Geek Vibes Nation
Oscar-nominated actress Amy Madigan, a.k.a. Aunt Gladys, is joining Netflix’s serial killer series, All the Sinners Bleed — Variety
Neon acquires Alex Ullom’s second feature, 4x4: The Event, following the purchase of his debut feature, It Ends, which comes out later this year — Deadline
New trailers this week:
🔥 Lenskeeper— Gorgeous-looking sci-fi horror described as Lovecraft meets Fulci
🪺 The Arborist — Folk-gothic horror about a haunting seemingly triggered by deforestation. Intriguing, to say the least.
👶 Dolly— ‘70s horror pastiche about possessed dolls. Need I say more?
Bloody-Disgusting reported on the new Faces of Death trailer being out, but obviously to anyone who knows about the ‘80s original, that video got removed due to YouTube’s ToS. Read the article here.
🎟️ Marquee of the Macabre: Upcoming horror films & TV
🧽 Paul Fieg’s The Housemaidis releasing on DVD and Blu-Ray next week, February 3rd.
🎭 The Strangers: Chapter 3, the third film in the new Strangers trilogy, is hitting theaters this coming Friday, February 6th.
🪺 Andrew Mudge’s The Arboristhits VOD (and limited theaters in the US) on February 6th.
That’s it for this week’s digest! Thank you so much for reading through.
ABOUT FIELD NOTES FROM HELL
FIELD NOTES FROM HELL is Deep Cuts’ weekly email digest. Dispatches go out every Sunday, with handpicked capsule reviews, news updates, and horror recommendations.
Glad to see some love for Triangle. The cover made it seem like a cruise slasher, but the time loop made it genuinely disturbing on a thematic level. Nice write-up.
Glad to see some love for Triangle. The cover made it seem like a cruise slasher, but the time loop made it genuinely disturbing on a thematic level. Nice write-up.