It has been nearly 20 years since Sam Raimi’s last foray into horror-comedy with Drag Me to Hell in 2009. As entertaining as that film is, its PG-13 rating left many wondering whether Raimi would ever return to the unrestrained excess of his original Evil Dead films. Send Help, his first R-rated thriller in more than 25 years, delivers exactly the kind of chaos that fans have been missing. If anything, it feels as though he never left.
Rachel McAdams plays Linda Liddle, a quirky, hard-working employee at financial firm Preston Strategic Solutions. Her skills and seven-year tenure have put her in line for a long-promised promotion to vice-president, assured to her by her boss once his son, Brandon Preston, takes over the company. Brandon, played by Dylan O’Brien, quickly proves to be an entitled nepo hire, dismissing Linda because of her frumpy appearance and socially awkward demeanour. He goes so far as to award the promotion to one of his former fraternity brothers instead.
Brandon later offers Linda a chance to redeem herself by accompanying him to Bangkok to help finalize a merger. In reality, he plans to abandon her there. A storm derails those plans when their plane crashes, leaving Linda and Brandon stranded as the sole survivors on a deserted island.
“Send Help, his first R-rated thriller in more than 25 years, delivers exactly the kind of chaos that fans have been missing.”
Power dynamics, once firmly established, are difficult to break. On the island, however, they are completely reversed. Linda is a devoted Survivor fan, and her familiarity with the show has given her practical survival skills. Brandon, by contrast, is injured and largely helpless, unable to walk properly or contribute to finding food or shelter. From there, the film becomes a hybrid of Cast Away and Misery. The greatest threat to survival is not the elements, but each other.
It takes some time for the film to build momentum and establish its central dynamic, but once the plane takes off, Send Help accelerates quickly and never lets up. Everything audiences expect from a Sam Raimi horror-comedy is on full display. Wild point-of-view shots and extreme close-ups are abundant. The pitch-black sense of humour frequently veers into outright cruelty. A cartoonish amount of blood and bile is splattered across the faces of the two leads.
An early sequence sees Linda hunting a boar for the first time, ending with Rachel McAdams drenched in blood and snot. It is the moment when the film makes clear just how committed both leads are to the goopy chaos that follows. The sequence, like much of the film, is captured with flair by cinematographer Bill Pope.
Send Help lives and dies on the antagonistic relationship between its two leads. McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, aided by writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, skillfully manipulate audience sympathy between their characters. The film repeatedly teases moments of friendship or romance, only to undercut them with acts of hilariously vindictive cruelty.
“Send Help lives and dies on the antagonistic relationship between its two leads.”
O’Brien, typically cast as affable, dials the smarminess up to an extreme. His Brandon is a smug antagonist who is quickly and repeatedly humbled by his complete inadequacy in the jungle. As effective as O’Brien is, McAdams delivers the standout performance. Linda’s newfound confidence transforms her into a force of nature, while also revealing a vicious streak that emerges as she begins to enjoy island life far too much.
One sequence in particular has Linda paralyzing Brandon while threatening him with a knife, a moment that drew an audible recoil from much of the audience. The tension escalates to such an exaggerated degree that it would not have been surprising if the scene ended in a full-blown brawl reduced to a cartoon dust cloud of flying fists. Knowing Raimi’s sensibilities, an eyeball would likely not have survived.
Even if it is not Sam Raimi’s best work, Send Help remains an absolute blast. It is the kind of film that begs to be seen with a large crowd, one ready to laugh, scream and wince all at once. Between this and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, it has been one of the strongest runs of January horror releases in years. It is encouraging to see that, even after a long absence from the genre, Raimi has not lost any of his mischievous playfulness. Even if the experience did leave me feeling a little queasy.
