There’s technically only been a four-year gap between director Sam Raimi’s two most recent projects — 2022’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and his newest release Send Help — but in many ways, it feels like the first true “Sam Raimi” movie we’ve gotten since 2009’s Drag Me To Hell. Untethered by franchise restraints, be they Marvel or Oz-imposed (as with 2013’s Oz The Great And Powerful), he’s able to get back into the gleeful gross-out groove he’s perfected over the past 45 years. Those who have been waiting patiently for the director’s return to the world of unrepentant gore, squishy sound design and manic close-ups should find plenty in Send Help to scratch the itch. It may not quite be one’s top desert-island movie pick but it’s a ruggedly raucous remedy to a historically slow stretch of the movie year.
Rachel McAdams turns in delightfully unhinged work as Linda Liddle, a strategy and planning manager at Preston Strategic Solutions, who’s been quietly holding out years for a VP promotion. Her odds for advancement worsen when the CEO’s knavish son Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) takes the reins from his late father. The two are en route to Bangkok for business when their corporate jet crashes near a desert island somewhere in the Pacific. As luck would have it, Linda is an experienced survivalist and proves much more useful in their stranded state than Bradley, who sustained a leg injury during the crash. He makes the mistake of assuming the power dynamic the pair had at their company, and it’s enough to say that Linda doesn’t take too kindly to Bradley’s chauvinistic demeanor and pushy attitude as they attempt to secure rescue.
Once Linda sets up camp for them, Send Help turns into a tense two-hander that recalls captivity thrillers like Misery and Hard Candy, even if Raimi’s film is markedly less subdued in its operation by comparison. Bradley’s entitled and arrogant personality more or less remains the same after the accident but once Linda washes ashore, a switch flips and the meek underling transforms into a confident outdoorswoman. A less repugnant boss would see her leadership skills as an asset but he’s stuck in the mentality that he wields power over her, even though org chart-hierarchy means nothing this far away from headquarters. An early montage, wherein Linda leaves Bradley to fend for himself after he insults her, portends the nastiness to transpire between them; “We’re not in the office anymore, Bradley,” she sternly reminds him upon her return.
Rachel McAdams has been superb in both comedic and dramatic realms over the past 20+ years but what she gives in Send Help has a exuberant ferocity and manic energy that we haven’t quite seen from her before. Not only is Linda more self-assured once she and Bradley are deserted but she lords her newfound power over him in a way that can turn our sympathy against her, even knowing how horribly she had been treated previously. In a more straight-laced rendering of this setup, Linda would turn into a heroine who overcomes her resentments but McAdams plays things more ambiguous morally, so the gulf between protagonist and antagonist isn’t large as one might expect. She and Dylan O’Brien also have believable romantic chemistry too, which lends itself to tonal textures that can shift from one moment to the next.
If anything, Sam Raimi stays in the “psychological game of wits” territory a bit too long before Send Help inevitably gets violent and he finally goes gonzo with the thing. The pacing before then feels a bit off, there’s a corny jump scare that seems included only to check the “horror” box on the genre list, and a couple of the plot developments are telegraphed a bit too obviously. But few directors revel in nasty practical effects more than Raimi and he certainly lets the blood and guts fly when it counts. Co-scribes Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, who put their heads together for slashers Freddy Vs. Jason and 2009’s Friday The 13th, are likely more comfortable in that area too, although they do a nice job developing the stakes here beforehand. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another 17 years for the next Raimi film that actually feels like a product from his cheerfully demented brain.
Score – 3.5/5
More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Iron Lung, a sci-fi horror film starring Mark Fischbach and Caroline Rose Kaplan, adapts the submarine simulation video game in which a convict explores a blood ocean on a desolate moon using a watercraft to search for missing stars and planets.
Also coming to theaters is A Private Life, a comedy mystery starring Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil, following a renowned psychiatrist as she mounts a private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered.
Premiering on Amazon Prime is The Wrecking Crew, an action comedy starring Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa, in which two half-brothers, one a loose cannon cop and the other a disciplined Navy SEAL, must work together to unravel a conspiracy behind their father’s murder in Hawaii.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup