They put Rachel McAdams on a plane again — but this time, she’s got the tools to fend for herself. In Send Help — Sam Raimi’s long-awaited return to all-out horror-comedy — the Red Eye alum is playing delightfully against type. Rather than a flustered final girl, McAdams is Linda Liddle, the resident “workhorse” at a Fortune 500 company and a Survivor obsessive. By day, she takes on much more work than she has to, sacrificing her lunch breaks to chow on tuna fish sandwiches from the confines of her cubicle. By night, she goes home to her bird, pores over survival manuals, and dreams of the promotion coming her way. It was, after all, promised to her by the former president of Preston — but with his passing comes a new boss, the smarmy nepo baby Bradley (Dylan O’Brien), whose first order of business is replacing Linda with his far-less-competent frat buddy (Xavier Samuel). But Linda soon gets the last laugh: when Preston’s private plane crashes en route to a business trip in Thailand, she and Bradley are the sole survivors. On a deserted island with no hope of rescue, Linda’s survival skills make her the new boss, while Bradley — already pretty useless, even without a gnarly leg injury — finds himself entirely at her mercy. So begins the kind of class-conscious, cat-and-mouse thriller we’ve seen in countless configurations, from the frosty Misery to the nihilistic Triangle of Sadness. What sets Send Help apart from all the others is, of course, the Raimi touch: It’s been 16 years since the director has delivered a straightforward horror, and he brings the full weight of his trademark, gonzo gore to bear here. That doesn’t entirely stop this from leaning into predictable beats, but Raimi, McAdams, and O’Brien are having so much fun, it’s impossible not to join them on the ride. |
