Send Help centers on a bashful woman from Accounting. Wait, no. She’s not from Accounting, she’s from Planning and Strategy. Her name is Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams).
Linda is a hard worker who just wants a promotion. She has dedicated seven years of her life crunching numbers and doing her best to support the financial management company she works for. She has become so valuable that the top executives believe the company would collapse without her.
However, her new boss, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), cares little about her or her performance. In fact, he is so disgusted with her that he plans to have Linda transferred to a dead-end position. He also promoted Donovan (Xavier Samuel), his college buddy, just because they’re buddies. Wait, no. Bradley said that Donovan is good with people… and with golf. Oh yeah. Especially golf.
But Bradley is a reasonable man, and he is kind of amazed when Linda barges into his office and expresses her anger at him for promoting Donovan. So he challenges her to prove him wrong. She should join them on a business trip to Bangkok to finalize the company’s impending merger. Impress him, and she will get what she wants.
Deal. So to Bangkok they went.
Unfortunately, their trip is cut short when the plane flies through a storm and crash-lands in the sea. The only survivors: Linda and Bradley.
Oh yeah. One of the most interesting things I forgot to mention is that Linda has outstanding survival skills. Being stranded in the middle of nowhere is no problem for her. Meanwhile, Bradley has zero survival skills and a banged-up foot from the plane accident.
Suddenly, the roles are reversed. Suddenly, Bradley needs to depend heavily on Linda to survive. Suddenly, she is now essential to him.
Linda is now in control.
Sam Raimi is a fun director and he makes fun movies. That is all I can think of while watching Send Help.
It goes without saying that the Evil Dead director is not a fan of sticking to one genre. Send Help is not purely a horror movie. It is also a dark comedy that mostly takes jabs at corporate sexism and power dynamics. Then it becomes a survival thriller, with our main characters trying to survive after being stranded on a remote island. Even more so, it is a psychological drama that explores both Linda and Bradley’s deep-seated emotions and psyche. What is impressive is that Raimi manages to make all of this work without sacrificing narrative coherence.
Furthermore, this film feels fresh and brand new even if there is a bit of Triangle of Sadness, Cast Away, and Misery in it. Perhaps it is the way Raimi shoots the film, which feels frantic. It whips and it zooms and it swirls. There is a sense of chaos and energy to it that will never bore you. Sure, the CGI is shoddy, but who cares? What matters is the mayhem and the jolly good time it delivers.
Now for the actors, all I can say is that they are fantastic. Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien really deliver. Rachel embodies Linda perfectly, and her transformation from meek and awkward to ruthless dominatrix is simply gnarly. On the other hand, you just want to punch Dylan in the face for his portrayal of Bradley. Surprisingly, though, there are moments when you feel for his helplessness.
All in all, Send Help is a return to form for Sam Raimi after a quick pit stop into superhero movies. And I believe that statement alone says a lot about the film. It’s nice that Sam Raimi is still Sam Raimi. He’s still nifty, still deranged, and still fun. This may not be his best work, but it’s certainly up there as one of his most memorable.
4/5