Send Help

Most famous for his Evil Dead trilogy, Sam Raimi is known for his kinetic, campy style of filmmaking, a sensibility that has been present throughout his career. His signature style is once again deployed in full force in Send Help. Marking the director’s return to full-on horror since Drag Me to Hell, this endlessly delightful survival thriller is as viciously fun as moviegoers could have hoped for.

Rachel McAdams stars as Linda Liddle, a mild-mannered and slightly odd office worker who’s been promised a huge promotion for her years of hard work. However, when her boss’s entitled son, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien), takes over, she’s passed over without a second thought. Since she’s the only one on the team who knows what she’s doing, she’s roped into attending an important meeting in Bangkok. When the plane crashes, she and Bradley are stranded on a beach as the sole survivors. With Linda’s obsession with Survivor granting her essential skills that enable her to thrive while her boss is helpless without her, their power dynamic is flipped, and tension grows between them.

McAdams and O’Brien are electrifying together. Each actor relishes every moment of their performance and wholly commits themselves to the wackiness of the script penned by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. While O’Brien’s arrogant “nepo baby” is a character that audiences will love to hate, the wholesome charm that McAdams brings to Linda makes her someone viewers will want to root for. As she becomes more accustomed to life on the island, though, a darker side of her is revealed.

Equally as fun as watching these stars bounce off each other is Raimi’s irreverent direction. Although his latest movie is tamer than his 1981 video nasty in terms of its violence, there’s still plenty of gnarly practical effects that fluctuate between gruesome and hilarious, often multiple times within the same shot. One scene involving McAdams brandishing a knife in front of a paralysed O’Brien, for example, will have audiences wincing in their seats before they burst out laughing at a surprise rug pull.

Less Triangle of Sadness, a lot more Evil Dead, Send Help is a fiendishly mean-spirited and darkly comedic romp that wants viewers to have a great time. With the combination of Raimi’s creatively grotesque filmmaking and tour de force turns from McAdams and O’Brien, it’s impossible not to have a blast while watching this one.