Send Help

4 outta 5

Send Help is a thriller that is darkly funny as it follows two characters going increasingly bonkers. It has a cascading series of unfortunate events as the audience’s sympathies shift over the course of the film. There is a lot of yelling that gets funnier and intense, as the story which seems to start as man vs. nature eventually becomes man vs. woman. There’s a lot of wild twists and intentionally gross out moments for a very crazy and often hilarious journey of niceness to madness.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a corporate worker who is very awkward but still diligently does her job, hoping to get noticed and promoted. The new CEO of the company, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) finds her disgusting as when she greeted him she looked like a wreck and had a speck of tuna on her lip. But he invites her on a business trip, although that may have been just so he could point and laugh at her with his buddies. Even when they’re on the plane and she is diligently working, he gets his bros to laugh at her audition tape for Survivor. Which is uncalled for in a lot of ways, mostly because her audition tape rocks. Things get worse when the plane crashes, the crew and other passengers perish at sea (in an incredibly messy manner) but survivors Linda and Bradley wash up on a deserted island. Bradley is injured and cannot move so Linda takes care of him. But even on a deserted island, he is still trying to be the boss. She says that he isn’t in control of anything as he’s dependent upon her for food and shelter. As he heals, their angry relationship starts to soften, but whenever Bradley steps out of line, Linda smacks him back. And it is getting increasingly dangerous for Bradley to stay on that island with her.

At the start, Linda’s most meaningful conversation she has is with her pet bird when they’re sitting down to watch Survivor. On the plane, when Bradley and friends are mockingly laughing at her Survivor audition tape, it seems extra mean because she clearly poured her heart into and, and it is genuinely charming. It feels cathartic during the very graphic and messy plane crash where they crawl over each other to save their lives as they get sucked out of the plane. Linda even tries to save one, but he crawls at her and tries to get into her seat, and there is a lot of biting and stabbing to save herself. One of Bradley’s buddies is defined by his suspenders, so seeing him get hung out the window by his suspenders is darkly hilarious.

When they end up on the island, McAdams’ performance becomes gleefully extreme. She has fun line deliveries where she is rather jovial about the bad situation they’re in. A scene when she comes face to face with a boar she is hunting is incredibly messy with blood spewing everywhere as she graphically takes it out and then throws the head at Bradley’s feet. She tries to convince Bradley that he’s thriving, but he is more concerned about trying to escape. Linda’s arc starts as righteous retribution at the man who has wronged her, but she does increasingly mean and unstable things that put her in the villain category. There is a moment where she is waving around a knife and talking about castration, and what happens next is a jaw dropping twist. Director Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, Spider-Man 3) always has a great feel for goo and gore. There’s a bit where one character just ends up vomiting repeatedly on another that is grossly hilarious that is a staple of a lot of Raimi’s horror work. Another bit has a dark, undead vision of a victim which turns Send Help into an Evil Dead film for like 2 minutes.

O’Brien shows a lot of different sides to Dylan. He starts the film as clearly some nepo-baby who inherited his father’s company (the portraits of his father are that of frequent Raimi collaborator, Bruce Campbell) and Dylan is just kind of both pathetic and despicable. When Linda meets Dylan, he can’t get over the tuna fish stain on the side of her mouth, and he finds a small amount of tuna on the side of his hand which is disgusting to him. When he is still trying to boss her on the island, she eventually strands him for a day by himself without any food or water to teach him a lesson, which seems empowering but is actually cruel. By the end of the movie, Dylan has to lie and outwit Linda’s various power play schemes, and the final scene between them is riveting.

Send Help is a dark thriller but there’s twisted and randomly funny and crazy moments. This fits well with Sam Raimi’s previous movies of extreme craziness, taking the viewer on a ride that never stops being bonkers.