2026 | rated R | starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien | directed by Sam Raimi | 1 hr 53 mins | 2 1/2 out of 5 |
An appropriately strange film that only Sam Raimi could make as work to the extent that it does, Send Help takes the power dynamics of the office battle of the sexes and tosses it on a desert island where the most resourceful at survival, not just being able to play golf, becomes the tribe leader. Office drone Linda Little (Rachel McAdams, terrific against type) gets passed up for a promotion when the bosses son Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien, in type but still terrific) is installed as the new company president. On a business trip overseas the company private jet crashes in the ocean, leaving Linda and Brad to fend for themselves alone on a desert island where Linda’s literal Survivor skills turn the power dynamic between them upside down.
Send Help is marketed as Sam Raimi’s return to his brand of cartoonish R-rated horror/comedy since Drag Me to Hell over a decade ago. It’s cartoonish yes, but it’s not particularly effective as a horror movie or a comedy. It never pushes the envelope into something outrageous enough or extreme enough and on the occasion that it threatens to, it reverses that tone. I liked the beginning; I liked the third act turn and there is a lot of wheel spinning in the middle where two solid actors ham it up in a fun way but not a lot resonates. McAdams is particularly good here. They didn’t just turn her into a nerd with a pair of glasses and a frumpy outfit, she’s a fully realized character and McAdams seems to relish in turning her awkward weirdness into a real person we all know instead of a stereotype. You know, the one that would make an audition tape to be on Survivor. O’Brien plays very much into his persona here, but it’s nonetheless effective as a smarmy executive who is so good at telling people what they want to hear that he makes you want to believe him.
After a hyper-violent plane crash, the duo are stranded on an island and Linda is wasting no time building shelter, making food, collecting water and caring for Preston. Her ability to turn leaves and bamboo into tables and countertops is almost Gilligan’s Island level cartoonish, which the movie should have leaned into more for laughs. Not a lot of their back and forth goes far enough to drive the movie. We’re given enough information for everything else to play out predictably.
Except for the final turn, which I won’t give away, suffice to say this movie is very easily setting up a class warfare satire much like Ruben Ostlund’s absurd satire Triangle of Sadness, where a cruise ship of wealthy passengers gets shipwrecked only to find themselves helpless without the janitorial staff. One of those “rich people don’t know how to do anything” movies. Send Help goes in the more interesting direction then the premise might indicates, the fashionable one dictated by the class warfare and gender power dynamic tropes – and for that it has my admiration. Even then the final button the film ends on still doesn’t really work for me.
But then there’s that big flabby middle and a rushed mess of a finale to content with. We have two game actors here diving into whatever Raimi throws at them, but a story and stakes that never really raise a pulse. This movie doesn’t really dig into the potential for all it’s worth and expand it to something fresh. It’d call it underwhelming.