Disney / Buena Vista
From the moment Send Help opens it’s clear which Sam Raimi we’re getting.
The opening sequences of Rachel McAdams navigating American corpo-hell as a disheveled, awkward, and downtrodden analyst right up until the harrowing and hilarious plane crash that sets the plot into motion it is very clear that this is not work for hire Sam Raimi.
This is the real deal.
At its core, Send Help is a two actor chamber piece: McAdams plays Linda Liddle, who is used for her brilliance with numbers by empty suits in her department looking to get ahead as they snicker behind her back. There’s a maniacal specific quality to Liddle’s desperate sadness that reminds you why Raimi and the Coen Brothers were collaborators early in their careers. She lives alone with her bird, obsesses over the TV show Survivor, is constantly spilling food on her face or make-up on her teeth and is generally shunned by the rest of her office.
Liddle is counting on a promised promotion to VP from new CEO Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), for which she’s passed over because Preston finds her viscerally disagreeable. Unfortunately the cadre of bros he’s elevated around him cannot navigate the specifics of a new merger they’re working on in Thailand without her analysis so they have to bring her aboard the private jet to the Far East.
Then the jet crashes with Liddle finding herself on the desert island she’s always dreamed of and Preston nigh helpless with a broken leg and the power dynamics swap.
Rachel McAdams delivers a real performance here. Known for her work in fairly bland and inoffensive comedy, McAdams here fully immerses herself in a character who is at once awkward, brilliant, compelling, and finally menacing. As unlikely as it would seem to cast a woman as gorgeous as McAdams as a shunned office frump, she finds a lot of dimension in the character and really rises to the challenge of working with Sam Raimi at full splatter.
McAdams is paired with Dylan O’Brien here and he’s game for the role of the terminal nepo baby corporate hack who will be humbled multiple times in the film. He’s able to find touches of humanity in the character that greatly aid the film as it begins to play with the audience’s loyalties through the battle of wills between Liddle and Preston. What seems like a fairly standard, even classical, retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, unfolds with real originality as our working class audience identification character and our upper crust villain reveal some hidden worlds within their characters.
If the performances are the heart of Send Help, then Sam Raimi’s direction is the soul.
Raimi has always been a filmmaker who finds real delight in horror and the horror in the every day and he’s on top form here, recalling excellent work in 2009’s Drag Me to Hell. The Raimi of Drag Me and this film pair the rich eye for characterization Raimi developed through the 90’s with the fearless energy that made us love Raimi in the first place. The blood and vomit splatter feels truly earned here, in other words.
Raimi’s signature style is evident throughout: dynamic camera moves, inventive set pieces, and that intoxicating blend of eerie tension with slapstick release. He’s also carefully paced a film that relies on tension and what’s going on behind the eyes. It’s a film where the story really unfolds and will probably reward a rewatch to see how the leads foreshadow their character’s moves in the set up sequences.
Perhaps what’s most impressive is how Raimi navigates the film’s shifting moods without losing narrative momentum. It’s a movie where you never check your watch.
Send Help is successful because it leverages its premise to explore something deeper: power, revenge, and sadism hidden where you would never expect. It delivers thrills without hesitation, splatter without apology, and commentary without easy answers that you probably expected from the opening scenes.
The dynamic between McAdams and O’Brien alternates between hilarious, deeply sad, and harrowing. It’s the lifeblood of this movie. American thrillers can still operate at their very best: bold, unpredictable, and shocking. It’s a showcase for Rachel McAdams’ and Dylan O’Brien’s considerable talents and a testament to Sam Raimi’s enduring genius as a director.
Extras include audio commentary, featurettes, deleted scenes, and bloopers
Highly Recommended.
