Title: Send Help
Describe This Movie In One Cast Away Quote:
CHUCK: Hey, is all this turbulence from Santa and those eight tiny reindeer?
Brief Plot Synopsis: Island living ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 4 Gilligan’s Islands out of 5.
Tagline: “She’s the boss now.”
Better Tagline: “The last thing this movie needs is Tony Danza, thanks.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) has languished for years in the Planning & Strategy Department. Sadly, things don’t look to change when new President Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) takes over and reneges on his father’s promise to make Linda VP. He convinces her to “make her case” at the company’s presentation in Bangkok. And then, wouldn’t you know it, their plane crashes on a remote island, giving Survivor obsessive Linda a chance to turn the tables.
“Critical” Analysis: Most people know Sam Raimi made his mark as a horror director. The Evil Dead trilogy — along with superhero/horror composite Darkman — established those bona fides early on. But Raimi’s second movie, the little seen Crimewave, was a straight-up comedy.
Comedy has always informed Raimi’s work. A kind of lunatic hilarity runs through all the Evil Dead movies (none more so than the final one, Army of Darkness). He’s made straight-up dramas like The Gift and A Simple Plan, but even the Spider-Man movies that propelled him to A-list status have slapstick elements.
And also whatever the hell this is.
Send Help is Raimi’s first return to full-on scares since 2009’s Drag Me To Hell. Fittingly, there are plenty of laughs to go around, but they’re of the darker variety like in, say, Evil Dead II. And while you might assume the plane crash would be where the horror kicks in, I go back further; to that hunk of tuna on Linda’s face while she’s talking to Bradley.
In all seriousness, Send Help is a hell of a lot fun. It’s visually nasty in the way we’ve come to expect from Raimi, suitably twisty, and quite funny in between (and sometimes during) gross-outs.
Much of the credit for this has to go to McAdams, which is hardly a surprise. The former Regina George has proven she can do everything from weepy romance (The Notebook) to thrillers (Red Eye) to straight comedy (Game Night). McAdams is a capital-F Force in this, portraying Linda’s transformation from subordinate to alpha to … something else so assuredly that Raimi’s biggest challenge was trying (unsuccessfully) to make her look frumpy.
O’Brien has an easier job. Bradley is truly unctuous, and that’s an easier row to hoe. To his credit, he takes a character easily consigned to cliche and gives him some depth. Not too much, though. Bradley remains, at heart, a real piece of shit.
And Raimi himself doesn’t take the easy road. Send Help isn’t a straightforward story of turning the tables. Linda has her own … issues, and things get complicated to an unpleasant extent soon enough.
Send Help may not be tippy-top tier Raimi, but it’s close. It has plenty of the director’s trademark gross-outs, sure, but there’s much more to it than that. More importantly, it’s a return to form for a guy who’s clearly begging for it. I said Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness was the closest thing to an MCU horror movie. And I wasn’t wrong. He’s free to film whatever he wants, of course, but it’s nice to see the guy return to form.
Does “The Classic” Make An Appearance? For those not in the know, “The Classic” refers to Raimi’s beloved 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88. It’s appeared in every one of his movies, including this one. You kind of have to squint to see it, however.
Send Help is in theaters today.
This article appears in Private: Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2026.