Director: Sam Raimi
Starring: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien
Run Time: 113 minutes
Filmmaker Sam Raimi started as an indie filmmaker, running through the woods with a camera, fake blood, and a group of friends, making a scary movie that would change the landscape of horror with The Evil Dead, a creative, gory horror comedy with inventive camera trickery and a handful of practical effects. Raimi, establishing one of the early blueprints for comic book heroics with the underrated Dark Man, eventually set the foundation for the modern superhero blockbuster with his Spider-Man trilogy. Even in his quieter moments, like the massively underrated drama A Simple Plan or the haunting southern ghost story The Gift, he proved he could handle the human condition with incredible precision. With Send Help, it feels like the director gathered all those different tools from his cinematic toolbox to build a survival story. It has the grit of a thriller, the heart of a character drama, and just enough of that classic Raimi chaos to keep every frame engaging.
Rachel McAdams plays Linda, an awkward corporate data specialist who is frequently overlooked and even mocked by her arrogant boss, Bradley, played by Dylan O’Brien. When their private plane goes down over a remote island, the office hierarchy changes instantly. Bradley is badly injured and completely out of his element, while Linda, a survivalist obsessive auditioned for the television show Survivor, has spent years studying exactly how to handle a situation like this. While waiting for rescue, Linda grows stronger and more confident, while Bradley becomes impatient and continues to exert a dominance that doesn’t exist anymore. A psychological battle for control erupts between the two colleagues, one that turns manipulative and violent.
What really makes Send Help work is the way the script lets these characters push and pull against each other. The dialogue is sharp and clever, with a twist in power dynamics that is, many times, mean-spirited, but it’s also comedic. As the situation grows more desperate, the story shifts into a game of cat and mouse, which leads to betrayal and, eventually, a brutality that feels very much earned. McAdams and O’Brien have a surprising amount of chemistry together; the two actors bounce and balance their performance between each other in both complementary and comical ways. They make you care about these people even when they are terrible to each other.
Raimi is clearly having a lot of fun leaning back into his horror roots here, a genre trait that appears in different, fun ways throughout the film. He treats the island less like a tropical paradise and more like a carnival fun house, using the dense jungle and the shifting shadows to create an atmosphere where anything can pop out of the bushes, fall from a tree, or float in from the ocean. A scene involving a wild boar brings back his signature gross-out humor, the kind of stuff that makes you want to laugh and shield your eyes at the same time. Whether a gory encounter with a wild animal or a desperate attempt to save a life amid food poisoning, Raimi finds a way to make the physical reality of survival both visceral and oddly comedic. It is a specific tonal tightrope that very few directors can walk, but he manages to make all the bold choices in this film have an undeniable entertainment value.
While the story's format is relatively simple, the character choices lead to interesting emotional moments. There are quiet scenes where the trauma that shaped these two adults comes to the surface, particularly regarding Linda’s past relationship, which adds a layer of weight to the survival moments. These are balanced by sequences of near slapstick violence that are hilariously over-the-top. The story starts to feel a little long toward the final act, and the pacing slows just as you expect it to accelerate. Even with that slight drag at the end, the journey remains consistently engaging thanks to Raimi’s unique style.
Send Help is a great example of a simple story elevated by a director who knows exactly how to manipulate an audience. Raimi takes this survival tale, a story audiences have seen in many forms, and pushes it to its absolute limit, proving once again that he remains one of the finest directors in the business.
Monte’s Rating
4.00 out of 5.00
