Send Help
by George Wolf
As much as Send Help feels like the Sam Raimi film that it is, the writing credits seem a bit unfinished. With a premise taken more from Triangle of Sadness than Castaway, and two pivotal plot points lifted from films I won’t mention for fear of spoilers, you’d expect at least an inspired by or story elements citation of the previous works.
No? Alrighty then. Raimi works from a script by the team of Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (Baywatch, 2009’s Friday the 13th, Freddy vs. Jason), providing the requisite dark humor, blood splatter and body fluids for a fun, root-for-the-underdog romp.
Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is that underdog. Linda puts in long, committed hours in the strategy and planning department of a big firm. She’d been promised a major promotion from the founder (nice Bruce Campbell portrait on the wall!), but now he’s passed on and the d-bag son Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) has taken over.
And Bradley’s gonna give Linda’s promotion to his frat buddy instead.
Linda sticks up for herself, so Bradley gives her the chance to prove her worth at a big merger meeting in Bangkok. But when their plane crashes, Linda and Bradley end up as the only ones left alive on a deserted island. And right away, Linda’s skills are very valuable indeed.
Turns out, she’s a survivalist junkie who has auditioned for Survivor. Linda knows her way around the dangers of an uninhabited locale, while Bradley doesn’t know much beyond silver spoon-fed privilege. So Linda will not take kindly to being ordered around like the under-appreciated underling she was back in the office.
Bradley eventually becomes contrite, but can he be trusted? Linda appears ever helpful, but can she be trusted? Their castaway days become an increasingly bloody game of cat, mouse and wild boar, with some wonderfully competitive chemistry between McAdams and O’Brien.
She makes Linda’s transition to alpha female a crowd-pleasing hoot, and he crafts Bradley with a perfectly obnoxious mix of misguided mansplainer and smug elitist.
Yes, it’s over the top, just like you expect a Sam Raimi deserted island playground to be. What an unspoiled canvas for some blood spray, projectile vomiting, and a little survival of the deadliest. Game on!
Send Help delivers the R-rated fun, and it’s instantly relatable to the countless souls who’ve secretly dreamed of doing bodily harm to an insufferable boss. But it’s a comeuppance fantasy that still remains easily forgettable…unless you’ve seen the couple films it repeatedly recalls.
Then we’ll have something to talk about.
