Send Help

Director Sam Raimi’s first original film in 13 years is a fun psychological thriller, with a wickedly dark sense of humour and flashes of Raimi's trademark visual flair.  Essentially a two-hander between Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien, both throw themselves wholeheartedly into these enjoyably larger-than-life roles.

Premise:  When misogynistic new CEO Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien) takes over his father’s consultancy business, he passes over Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams), a hard-working-but-meek member of the Planning & Strategy Department, for promotion, giving it instead to his (equally chauvinistic) former frat buddy.  But after Bradley and Linda are the only survivors of a plane crash, washed up on the beach of an unidentified island, the balance of power begins to shift.

Review:

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Send Help, given that it marks director Sam Raimi’s first completely original film since 2009’s Drag Me to Hell (with 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness being part of the MCU, and 2013’s Oz the Great and Powerful playing with existing characters and settings).  And while there are elements of Send Help that hark back to Sam Raimi’s more idiosyncratic early movies (a particularly gory moment called to mind the pencil scene from The Evil Dead, and some of the heightened camera movements reminded me of Darkman), this movie is far more accessible than his earlier work, and far funnier than I was expected.

Of course, when I say “funny”, I don’t mean that this is a laugh-out-loud comedy, but it is for all intents and purposes a pitch-black dark comedy more than it is a horror or a thriller.  There are horrific moments, and there are tense moments – but they are far outnumbered by moments that showcase the film’s delightfully dark sense of humour.  The film’s tone is perfectly summed up in what is probably its most wince-inducing moment – the incident in question is happening just off-screen (so that your imagination is running wild), but despite the fact that what is happening is objectively horrifying, the whole audience that I saw this with were laughing at the sheer audacity of the scene.

“…a darkly comic satire of the workplace…”

Send Help is essentially a two-handed character drama, and as such, the plot is relatively straightforward: in the outside world, CEO Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien) has all the power (none of which appears to have been earned) over his downtrodden employee Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams), but when they are both marooned on a desert island, Bradley finds himself reliant on Linda’s wilderness skills to survive.  But just as Cast Away had far more going on than its one-line synopsis may have suggested, so too is Send Help more than a straightforward tale of survival.

In fact, in many ways Send Help is really a darkly comic satire of the workplace, which uses its exotic setting to comment on toxic workplace culture.  You could argue that Bradley (who inherited his position as CEO from his father and appears to be talentless in his own right) is no less reliant on the hard work and expertise of Linda in the ‘real world’ than he is reliant on her survival skills on the island – and yet in the ‘real world’ no one bats an eyelid at the parasitic nature of their relationship, where he reaps all the benefits of her efforts, without providing her with any recognition or reward in return.  But on the island, stripped of societal norms, the balance of power slowly begins to shift.

“…Rachel McAdams gives a career-highlight transformative performance…”

Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien both give fantastic performances – which is good considering they are the only characters on screen for the vast majority of the runtime!  Dylan O'Brien seems to be having fun revelling in the obnoxiousness of his character, while Rachel McAdams gives a career-highlight transformative performance as her character evolves on the island, revealing hitherto unseen talents and character traits.  At one point in the movie, the characters discuss the idea that ‘monsters aren’t born, they’re made’, and this is another theme that the film has fun exploring, as the balance of power – and, to some degree, the audience’s sympathies – shifts back and forth between Bradley and Linda.

Unexpectedly funny, with some genuinely surprising and unpredictable moments, and a pair of enjoyably heightened lead performances, I had a great time with Send Help, which managed to judge its tone perfectly from the awkward opening office scenes to the final parting shot.