Send Help – Film Review

Director – Sam Raimi
Writers – Damian Shannon, Mark Swift
Stars – Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a highly skilled member of the Strategy and Planning department of a large business. She’s capable of analysing complex information and delivering the reports on time, but the problem is she just doesn’t look the part! She’s been promised a promotion by her old boss to the role of Vice President, but with the arrival of new CEO Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), he thinks one of his golf buddies, Donovan (Xavier Samuel), would be better suited. After a confrontation with Bradley, Linda is offered one final chance to prove her worth, with a business trip to Bangkok in their private jet. After a mid-air explosion, Linda and Bradley are the only two surviving members of the flight. They arrive on a deserted island and have to set up camp and hunt to survive. That’s when the power dynamic starts to shift, as Linda has the skills to survive!

This is a new film directed by Sam Raimi, the man behind Horror classics like The Evil Dead and Army of Darkness. Raimi has also worked on more mainstream affairs, such as the original Spider-Man trilogy with Tobey Maguire, and more recently, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). While Raimi is capable of delivering an above-average superhero film, it’s great to see him working on something original. However, it is slightly disappointing that he wasn’t more involved in the script, which came from Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, who previously worked on Baywatch (2017) and Friday the 13th (2009). The script is sharp in places, but gets a little flabby in the second act, before an enjoyable finale. It’s an interesting premise, but the twists and turns are not what they could have been.

While not a horror movie, the film does deliver a few jump scares. It’s quite playful in nature and has several laugh-out-loud moments. Rachel McAdams is great as the office nerd Linda, complete with pieces of a tuna sandwich stuck to the side of her mouth! The transformation to the blood-soaked hero of the wilderness is unexpected, as her battle for dominance with Bradley moves in different directions. It’s a funny film with an occasional darker edge. If you stand back and think about what is happening on screen, Linda is very far removed from a hero, but somehow we’re still rooting for her right to the end!