Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
If someone simply read the plot synopsis for ‘Send Help’ somewhere, one would assume it to be a dark, gritty survivor thriller about a boss and employee stranded on an island, but given that the film is directed by Sam Raimi, things are far more twisty and stray into horror territory. For those who don’t know, Sam Raimi surprisingly hasn’t directed anything since the 2022 ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’.
Written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, ‘Send Help’ stars Rachel McAdams as Linda Liddle, an overlooked, overworked analyst, whose promised promotion to the ‘Vice President’ post is denied to her when the company is taken over by Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), an arrogant nepo baby. Their power dynamics change when they’re the only two survivors of a plane crash and Bradley is at the mercy of Linda’s strategic skills to stay alive.
The opening minutes of ‘Send Help’ try a little too hard to establish Rachel McAdams’ Linda Liddle as the office oddball. She’s brilliant at her strategy-and-planning job, but struggles to connect with her colleagues, often eating lunch alone at her desk while awkwardly trying to insert herself into office conversations. Rachel McAdams, of course, pulls it off, but the writers didn’t need to lay it on so thick. Then again, as the plot progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that ‘Send Help’ is aiming for an over-the-top, darkly comic tone that thrives on making viewers uncomfortable, just not at the level of a Saw movie.
Dylan O’Brien’s Bradley, Linda’s new boss, is instantly unlikable as the trust-fund kid that inherits the firm from daddy dearest. He’s an unabashed jerk, cocky enough to tell Linda to her face that he’d rather promote someone who plays golf or presents a more polished image. Yet despite his obvious disdain for her, Bradley is advised to bring Linda along for a crucial merger meeting in Thailand. That’s where the tables turn: when their plane crashes, Bradley is forced to rely on the very employee he looks down on.
From fishing and hunting to quickly building whatever they need to survive, Linda Liddle from Strategy and Planning emerges as a formidable force after the crash, a practical warrior who can slay wild boars, while her nepo-baby boss can’t even write “Send Help” correctly in the sand as an SOS signal. Instead, he writes “Send Hepl,” in one of the film’s funnier moments. While Bradley is absolutely miserable, Linda thrives, possibly enjoying her stay on the island a lot more than her regular lives, and it also becomes increasingly clear that she is hiding some important secrets from Bradley.
Rachel McAdams is brilliantly unhinged as Linda, whose newfound confidence gradually morphs into something far sinister over the course of the film. Bradley, meanwhile, remains a privileged prick, albeit one who receives a harsh reality check after the crash, even if he never quite gives up trying to outsmart Linda. So their relationship on the island keeps fluctuating, one moment they’re co-survivors trying to stay alive; the next, they’d happily kill each other off. You can’t be too sure how things will end.
Dylan O’Brien more than holds his own opposite McAdams, delivering a performance that’s applause-worthy despite Bradley being an utter tool. Injured and largely immobilized for portions of the story, the character is forced to communicate everything from arrogance and resentment to sheer terror through little more than his eyes and facial expressions. O’Brien rises to the challenge, making Bradley frustrating, pathetic, and oddly sympathetic all at once.
What ‘Send Help’ does best is blur the lines between protagonist and antagonist, eventually placing both characters on equally murky moral ground. Yet the film’s most satisfying aspect remains Linda’s power trip through survival mode. After all, there’s something undeniably entertaining about watching a narcissistic nepo baby grovel at the feet of the overlooked employee for food, shelter, and help.
he climax offers definitive closure on the fate of its central characters, it ends with the kind of poetic justice that perhaps only a movie can get away with. The pacing occasionally stumbles and the special effects won’t blow anyone away, but ‘Send Help’ is gloriously wacky and worth checking out, particularly if you’re a Sam Raimi or Rachel McAdams fan.
Watch ‘Send Help’ on Jio Hotstar.
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