With a punchy thematic core and a stellar lead performance from Rachel McAdams, Send Help is the best kind of over-the-top fun.
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Send Help feels like a gift from the past sent to my modern day horror-thriller loving heart. It's been over 15 years since Raimi last made a mainstream horror film (2009's Drag Me to Hell being the last one) and it's been even longer since Rachel McAdams played in the horror thriller genre with 2005's Red Eye. So if you're offering up a blood-drench survival thriller when both Raimi and McAdams can go completely off-the-rails while tackling topics like misogyny in the workplace? Count me in. And that impulse was dead-on because this pairing seems to bring out the best out of everyone involved.
The Setup
The movie centers around Rachel McAdams Linda Little, an awkward but highly competent analyst for an unnamed corporate entity...that's just been passed on a promotion she was promised by the new CEO (Dylan O'Brien's Bradley). Hoping to prove her worth and earn her promotion through her work, Linda is brought along to help a close a foreign business deal. A deal that becomes that last of everyone's problems when the plane hits a storm and crashes into the ocean, with only two survivors: Linda and Bradley. And as Bradley quickly comes to discover, their power dynamic has flipped for the forseable future, and possibly forever...
I've missed Sam Raimi's high-end schlock. If there's anything that bugs me about modern horror it's that so much of it falls into the modern desaturated slow burn look and feel or the eighties camp vibe. While Raimi has always fallen into a little column A and a little column B because he enjoys using modern camera moves and techniques to heighten the fun, but he's also a guy credited with pairing Looney Tunes style slapstick to horror.
But honestly, that's not even the biggest reason this movie works. Because reason #1 with a bullet is
Rachel McAdams' Linda Liddle
I love everything about this character. How she's written, how she's performed, and how she evolves over the course of the film. Hell I might do a write-up about how they filter in some background information on her (cause it's real smart).
Linda is a type that we've seen plenty of movies about, that I've rarely seen captured so well. To put it simply, Linda is highly competent and well-meaning but socially awkward. Not so much that you'd need to leave the room if she came in, but in ways where it feels like she's forcing connection versus it occurring naturally.
This is emphasized by her attire, her hobbies and even how she speaks (McAdams is so good at this part). Why? The movie really wants us to feel the friction between what we can tell Linda deserves versus what she's getting. Basically the movie wants a tiny part of our brain to say...well what if the dickhead CEO is right...right before you subsequently hate yourself for thinking that.
This is emphasized by her attire, her hobbies and even how she speaks (McAdams is so good at this part). Why? The movie really wants us to feel the friction between what we can tell Linda deserves versus what she's getting. Basically the movie wants a tiny part of our brain to say...well what if the dickhead CEO is right...right before you subsequently hate yourself for thinking that.
But once Linda and Bradley are stranded on this jungle island, we get to watch her come into her own, because as it turns out she's been preparing for something like this for half her life, and relish an opportunity to lord power and influence over her boss in calculated ways.
She's also might be going mad with this new life and power as well, which leads to a number of the film's most over-the-top and shocking moments as the same woman who saved a man's life a moment ago goes off and fights a boar, and seems to love it.
Something I really like about Linda is that you understand all of her impulses, even if she's doing bad things. Like yeah, maybe I would make xyz thing harder for this guy because I've been through a lifetime of bullshit from guys like him and plenty from him specifically. I see no reason not to torment him a little. He needs consequences.
It also demonstrates how cruel environments, like a cutthroat office boys club, can create monsters.
It also demonstrates how cruel environments, like a cutthroat office boys club, can create monsters.
And this is where I need to give Rachel McAdams all of the flowers because she is riveting from start to finish no matter what wild direction the movie goes next. It's always intriguing, hilarious, or heartbreaking. She commits to everything she's asked to do whether it's looking like a bombshell movie star one moment or being completely unhinged a moment later. The movie relies on her performance and unpredictability to keep us invested and she's more than up to the task. I think we've got a genre star in the making.
Then there's Dylan O'Brien's Bradley
The Boss Baby
Dylan O'Brien's Bradley is a special kind of dickhead.
I think a lot of people are used to the "boss from hell" concept, who is demeaning, takes credit for their employee's work, and demonstrates a number of casual isms along the way.
I think a lot of people are used to the "boss from hell" concept, who is demeaning, takes credit for their employee's work, and demonstrates a number of casual isms along the way.
And while Bradley is certainly all of that, he's also a stand-in for what Sabrina Carpenter catchily referred to as a "manchild."
In a relationship, manchild behavior involves a lot of acting helpless, poor management of your emotions and in general not being a good or supportive partner. Someone who needs to be taken care of constantly, but is seemingly incapable of the doing the same for everyone else.
But there's another wrinkle that can make this infinitely worse. An off-the-charts ego. And Bradley has plenty of ego to spare.
Something the movie hammers home is that Bradley's ego is his biggest weakness. He believes he is superior to Linda despite a CEO position obviously meaning nothing out here, wildly over-estimates his own capabilities in their survival scenario, and can't seem to put together that mistreating Linda will not have good consequences for him.
His ego won't let him learn the lesson he needs to learn to survive and get Linda's unconditional help: humility.
So even after he's had the elements hand his ass to him as Linda thrives, his humility always feels temporary...because it is.
It also means the movie can lean into the fun of watching this dumbass suffer, even as Linda carries out more egregious acts of revenge, in increasingly over-the-top fashion.
Bring On The Camp
With the push and pull between the justifiably upset Linda and sustained suspicions about Bradley, the movie can lean into Sam Raimi's favorite stuff. Wonderfully gross and over-the-top violence.
What stands out here is how the movie moves away from the splatter or gory moments you'd expect in a survival horror movie, for more campy or cartoonish approaches. So instead of someone getting a gnarly injury in a misadventure through the jungle we trade it in for a bloody battle between Linda and a wild boar. Or how familiar elements, like folks being sucked out of the plane during the crash give us chances for hilarious over-the-top injuries and deaths for other passengers.
This is all well within Raimi's standard wheelhouse, but it's been awhile since I've seen it translated onto the big screen like this.
The major difference is that the targets or the purpose of these scenes is almost always to twist the knife on people or things going up against our likable lead Linda. Which means it's more of a celebration of a silly impossible thing happening to someone we don't like versus a very serious matter of life and death. It's still a great way to sand down the edges.
The Verdict: Wildly Satisfying
With a punchy thematic core and a stellar lead performance from Rachel McAdams, Send Help is the best kind of over-the-top fun. 8/10
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