In the past two decades, Michigan's own Sam Raimi, who started with low budget cult classics like Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness, and Darkman has made a trio of bloated muddled sequels - the franchise-killing Spider-Man 3, the Temu Tim Burtonesque Oz the Great & Powerful, and the messy Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - far removed from his scrappy roots. However, his latest, Send Help, is thematically and spiritually akin to his 2009's horror effort Drag Me To Hell and the move downscale suits him.
Rachel McAdams stars as Linda Liddle, an awkward, dorky corporate strategist who is reminiscent of Brendan Fraser's Elliot in Bedazzled - a sad tryhard who has no friends and annoys her co-workers. But she's a brilliant worker and was going to be promoted to a vice president slot at her firm except the CEO and founder of the firm has died, his clueless frat boy son, Bradley (Dylan O'Brien), has assumed control of the firm and given the job to one of his frat brothers.
After Linda storms his office protesting the snub, Bradley explains that her off-putting manner and appearance is why he passed her over, but offers her a chance to prove herself by coming along on the corporate plane to Bangkok to help finalize a merger. During the flight, the jerk who got her veep gig shows an audition video she'd submitted to Survivor to be a contestant. We'd seen survivalist books in her apartment, but the video is pretty cringey stuff. The laughter of the boys club is cut off by the plane crashing in a storm after half of them are sucked out of a breach in the cabin.
Linda washes ashore onto an island along with Bradley, who is unconscious with a badly injured leg. Good thing she knows survival skills as she rapidly builds shelter, and sets about gathering food and fresh water from rainfall and waterfalls. She even hunts a boar in a hilariously bloody scene. (This IS a Sam Raimi movie, after all. Evil Dead 2 fans will dig it.)
Not appreciating her efforts is Bradley who is belittling of Liddle (heh), mocking her survival skills which have kept him alive. So she leaves him alone for a couple of days until he's very hungry and thirsty to the point he's apologizing. But is he becoming a better, less sexist pig, or is he just trying to stay alive? And how does Linda's sudden alpha dog status spark changes in her, especially when early on she spots a possible rescue boat but instead hides because it's "too soon" to head back?
Since there's really only about one-and-a-half possible outcomes to this scenario (she lives or they both survive), Send Help rests on the performances and execution of the premise. O'Brien has the short-end of the stick in that the script by Damian Shannon & Mark Swift (Freddy vs. Jason, Baywatch) paints him as barely a two-dimensional cartoon out of a 1980s women-struggling-in-the-workplace comedy like 9 to 5 or Working Girl. It's just hard to imagine such an unreformed male chauvinist pig could exist in 2025 with today's woke pressures on corporations.
On the other hand, McAdams really elevates the material by delivering a layered performance which starts off also cartoonishly broad but the deepens showing her rising to her survival challenges then having to wrestle with the boss problem. It's a long way from Mean Girls and The Notebook.
Raimi is in fine form as well, tossing in some nice throwback Grand Guignol gore and some camera moves longtime fans will enjoy. More cheap thrillers from you, sir.
If you like your dramedy lean and especially mean, Send Help is a curdled Castaway.
Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.
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