Producer Behind Sam Raimi’s Send Help On The Scene That Looked Easy On The Page But Proved Challenging To Pull Off

Luck, as some might say, is when preparation meets opportunity.

In Send Help, the new psychological thriller from Evil Dead architect and Master of Horror Sam Raimi, Rachel McAdams ditches The Notebook for The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook as Linda Liddle, an underappreciated exec — and hardcore Survivor fanatic — forced to co-exist with her a-hole, insufferable nepo-baby boss (The Maze Runner’s Dylan O’Brien) after they’re marooned on a deserted island following a plane crash.

There, workplace resentment slowly metastasises into a terrifying — and occasionally amusing — primal power struggle. Think Working Girl meets Lost.

Behind the dark comedy and psychological warfare is a producer who knows exactly how much invisible labour it takes to make something this tightly wound feel effortless.

Speaking to 8days.sg via Zoom from LA, Zainab Azizi says she relates deeply to Linda’s plight.

“Absolutely. I think regardless of gender, everyone has felt like Linda Liddle at least once in their lives,” she says. “They’ve had a really tough job and maybe not the best boss or work environment.”

That connection helps explain why Send Help avoids treating its protagonist as a simple revenge fantasy. The film may escalate into something feral, but its emotional roots lie in recognisable frustration — something Azizi has seen firsthand.

In the production notes, Send Help co-scribe Daiman Shannon recalls how fearless Zainab was during development. “Zainab had the screenplay under her arm,” he says. “She had her machete, and she chopped through the Hollywood jungle, taking this where it needed to go.”

What Shannon described as her “machete” through the Hollywood jungle, Azizi reframes as persistence.

“He was trying to explain that my passion and perseverance in bringing this film to life was a whole journey in itself,” she adds.

“It’s so hard to get a movie made in Hollywood, and number two, making an original film is very, very hard.”

Born in Washington, DC, Azizi is a first-generation Afghan American. She began her career in the mailroom at the talent agency WME. There, she helped package a film for Raimi; he encouraged her to join his company as a producer. The rest is history. She was named Variety’s Top 10 Producers to Watch in 2025.

Azizi once likened producing to wedding planning. Asked to rate Send Help as a banquet, she doesn’t hesitate. “It was a very scary wedding banquet,” she says, laughing — a line that neatly sums up both the film’s tone and its behind-the-scenes reality.

Despite producing multiple films about isolation and survival (the 2023 Adam Driver–fronted 65 and last year’s Don’t Move), Azizi dismisses the idea that Send Help is part of a deliberate thematic streak.

“It’s pure coincidence,” she says. “Send Help is the first movie I sold in 2019.”

The timeline simply overlapped with other projects — a reminder that producers rarely control which films get greenlit first. “We have over 20 films in development,” she adds. “I can’t control what gets made.”

What she can control is preparation — something Raimi is famously obsessive about, given his indie roots (he and Ethan and Joel Coen are chums). Asked what looked easy on the page but proved hardest to execute, Azizi deflects the idea of chaos. “Sam is a very methodical director,” she says. “Nothing is ever really a nightmare because he plans.”

That planning extended to storyboards for every sequence, allowing departments to align long before cameras rolled. Even something as deceptively simple as “a plane crash” became, in Azizi’s words, “a beautiful long sequence,” requiring stunts, production design, and visual effects to work in lockstep. “It takes a village,” she says. “Nothing was a nightmare. It was all pre-planned and very carefully calculated.”

The collaborative spirit extends beyond logistics. Despite Raimi’s towering reputation, Azizi describes a director who actively invites input. “He is the kindest, most collaborative director,” she says. “There was never creative tension. We’re very aligned.”

That trust cuts both ways. Having learned her hardest lessons on her first produced feature, the 2022 Sandra Oh–starring horror Umma, Azizi now sees every challenge as cumulative knowledge. “I never look at anything as a failure or disappointment, but as a lesson,” she says. “There were a lot of learning curves on that one. But it’s a film I’m very, very proud to have gotten made.”

Raimi’s genre-hopping career — supernatural horror (Evil Dead, Drag Me to Hell), gritty crime (A Simple Plan), westerns (The Quick and the Dead), sports drama (For the Love of the Game), and big studio spectaculars (the Spider-Man trilogy, Oz: The Great and Powerful) — also sparks Azizi’s imagination.

Asked what she’d like to see him tackle next, she bypasses horror. “I think he would be great with a space movie,” she says. “I would love to see him direct something that takes place in space.”

Comedy, however, is already baked into Send Help. Azizi credits both Raimi and the cast for the film’s darkest laughs. “Sam loves comedy,” she says. “Our actors brought a lot of comedy and levity to the story as well.”

Even the film’s nods to Survivor — woven into Linda’s character — were there from the start. “It was always in the script,” Azizi says. And if she ever found herself marooned for real? She doesn’t hesitate. “If I was on the show, I think I might win,” she says, laughing. “So I’d love for them to call me.”

Jeff Probst, are you reading this?

Send Help (NC16) is now in cinemas.

Photos: 20th Century Studios