When was the last time Hollywood delivered a movie that actually surprised you? Send Help, the new Sam Raimi film starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, might just do that. It’s a twisted island nightmare that mixes comedy and horror into the kind of sharp-edged story only Raimi could pull off.
Raimi’s movies always bear his signature; wild camera tricks, close-up chaos, bursts of violence that somehow make you laugh. Remember the wild energy of Evil Dead or the big-screen spectacle of Spider-Man? That same feverish imagination drives Send Help. Here, it’s not demons or supervillains tormenting people, but office politics, human cruelty, and the survival instinct turned loose.
Send Help | Official Trailer | In Theaters Jan 30
The story follows Linda Liddle, played with surprising steel by Rachel McAdams. She’s an overlooked corporate foot soldier grinding away in the “Strategy and Planning” department, promised a promotion that never comes. Her new boss, Bradley Preston (played with smug precision by Dylan O’Brien) decides her loyalty doesn’t matter. He dumps the job opportunity on one of his golf buddies. Then he invites her on a “business trip” to Bangkok, which is really a set-up to ship her out of sight. But fate intervenes, or maybe karma. Their plane crashes spectacularly, leaving both stranded on a remote island.
When Linda wakes up alone on the sand, terrified yet somehow prepared, the film takes its first brutal turn. McAdams’s character isn’t the pushover everyone thought. She’s a devoted fan of the reality show Survivor, and she knows how to make fire, find food, and stay alive. Bradley, injured and helpless, wakes up to a world where corporate status means nothing. Now he needs the woman he mocked just to survive.
“We’re not in the office anymore,” Linda says coldly, when he tries to order her around. “Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness.” The line hits with the weight of every worker who’s ever been dismissed or demeaned by people in power. From there, the movie slides into psychological warfare. Who’s really in control? Who’s the predator now?
The script, written by Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, veterans of both horror and comedy with Friday the 13th and Shark Tale, keeps the tone razor-sharp. There’s dark humor, but also a real sense of danger. Every time you think the story might drift into rescue or redemption, Raimi twists the knife again. By the time McAdams and O’Brien’s characters turn on each other completely, you forget who you’re supposed to root for.
Cinematographer Bill Pope, who worked on Doctor Strange, gives the island an eerie, sunburnt glow. The camera dives, spins, and bleeds through scenes of slapstick violence and stomach-turning closeups, classic Raimi. One moment McAdams is fending off a wild boar. The next she’s drenched in blood and, yes, pig snot. It’s chaotic, it’s funny, and somehow, it works.
Still, Send Help might not be for everyone. Raimi’s manic style and twisted humor can turn stomachs as easily as they earn laughs. A few scares harken back to his Evil Dead roots, and the film’s late-game twist is telegraphed a little too clearly. But does that really matter? The ride itself is the spectacle — a nasty little parable about what happens when power, pride, and survival instincts collide.
For those tired of self-serious Hollywood morality tales, Send Help feels like a primal scream of entertainment. It’s funny, mean, and drenched in chaos. McAdams delivers her fiercest performance in years, O’Brien nails corporate arrogance gone feral, and Raimi once again proves why no one directs madness quite like he does.
Send Help is now in U.S. theaters and opens in the U.K. on February 5.
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English (US) · 