Send Help Finds Raimi and McAdams Playing a Gory, Delectably Mean-Spirited Game of Survivor
Director Sam Raimi gets back to his Evil Dead, Darkman, and Drag Me to Hell roots with his latest hysterically horrifying (and socially relevant) slice of bloody terror Send Help, and he’s brought sublimely malevolent Rachel McAdams along with him. Together, the pair produce an explosively entertaining thrill ride of upended power dynamics, psychological manipulation, and workplace sexism that rarely does the expected and always goes for the jugular — figuratively and literally — whenever and wherever possible.
Linda Liddle (McAdams) is the underappreciated lead executive of the Strategy and Planning division at a prestigious consulting firm. When the former CEO and owner of the company dies, his position is taken over by the man’s conniving and misogynistic son, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien). Linda, promised a promotion to Vice President (along with a nice bump in salary), discovers this new boss has no intention of following through on his late father’s wishes. He’s going to pass her over, filling the post with a former fraternity buddy (Xavier Samuel) who wouldn’t know how to plan a successful business strategy if it were to randomly wander over to him, flash a sexy smile, and abruptly bite him on the butt.
Linda is given one chance to prove herself and maybe earn back the promotion she’s already merited several times over: Join Bradley and his team on an Asian business trip and come up with a strategic plan that will win over a high-profile new client. But it’s clearly a ruse. While sitting in the back of the private aircraft, Linda realizes that Bradley has no intention of doing what is right. She’s only there to compose the proposal, a multilayered pitch deck sure to wow whoever looks at it and from which her name will be erased and theirs firmly printed on the front cover instead. This makes Linda justifiably mad.
Then the plane crashes.
From that point forward, Raimi, along with writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (the pair behind 2009’s Friday the 13th reboot), demonically turns everything upside down. Linda, a devoted Survivor fan who has been trying for years to get on the long-running reality competition show, pulls herself out of the ocean and onto a deserted tropical island, only to find a half-alive Bradley washed up ashore the next morning. From that point on, it’s clear who needs to be in charge and who should be following orders, and it isn’t the chauvinist in the expensive, if rather useless, luxury brand shoes.
Everything that happens from there is pure Raimi. Macabre, pointedly diabolical dream sequences with a pitch-black comedic lilt. Unhinged camerawork full of shocking whip pans, extreme closeups from unusual angles, and blood-soaked lens splashes that jolt the audience into frenzied uncertainty like an expertly staged jump scare, all of it courtesy legendary cinematographer Bill Pope (The Matrix, Spider-Man 2). A raucous, anything-goes orchestral score composed by a freewheeling, creatively uninhibited Danny Elfman in full Beetlejuice meets Men in Black (with a sly dash of Milk or Good Will Hunting) gonzo mode.
All of it is cut together with whimsically roguish gusto by Academy Award-winner Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker), Raimi granting the editor full authority to transform a simple montage or a dreamlike flashback into a frenetic caterwaul of unreliable visual exposition that blurs the line between truth, fantasy, and outright lies into something delectably otherworldly. From the first second Linda finds Bradley on the sand, cleans his wounds, and shrouds him from the unyielding sun, Murawski generates a breathless sensation of anxiety-fueled euphoria that never lets up. His work here is glorious.
But it’s McAdams who makes the film spectacular. This performance is one of her all-time best, a triumph of raw physicality, internalized nuance, searing facial inflections, and emotional complexity. Linda needs to unearth her inner strength, and being shipwrecked on this island is exactly the impetus she needs to bring out the best that’s always been lurking inside of her. But in doing so, she will also unleash a veiled beast of vengeance and retribution no one, possibly herself included, ever knew was there. McAdams makes it all instantaneously authentic. Moreover, she also makes it empathetically beguiling. Calling what the actor is doing magnificent is an understatement.
I’ll be curious to see what general audiences make out of all of this crazily mean-spirited nastiness. Send Help is far from the darkly comic feminist manifesto its trailers may lead some to believe. Instead, this is Raimi fully unrestrained. He’s showcasing the desires, lusts, and longings that lurk in the nether regions of humanity’s soul. Additionally, the filmmaker is also dishing out brutal just-deserts to the selfish, smug, and egotistically patronizing dregs who erroneously believe they’re better than everyone else they encounter in their daily treks around the sun. They deserve all of the pain, suffering, and unavoidable damnation that’s about to come their way — but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch.
The moral to the story? Don’t disrespect, ridicule, or look down on the Linda Liddle’s of the world. They’ll only take so much and, when they finally decide to fight back, there will be justified hell to pay. Consider yourselves warned.
Film Rating: 3½ (out of 4)
