Send Help Lets Sam Raimi Indulge In His Favorite Tricks, But I Wanted More (Review)

Beyond just his horror roots, Sam Raimi made his presence known as a filmmaker in the backwoods. The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II largely defined the “Cabin in the Woods” horror movie subgenre while also confirming a commanding presence. Though he would later expand his palette to the likes of New York City, with the Spider-Man films, or a medieval castle, he’s largely been defined by a rotating door of locations, which immediately makes his latest tropical locale a distinct place in his filmography. Send Help is distinct in Sam Raimi’s larger oeuvre not only because it lacks any real supernatural elements, but also because of that aforementioned location. Don’t let the tropics fool you; his classic horror tricks linger in the trees, no matter their foliage.

Longtime fans of Raimi’s work will be happy to see him back in the saddle, as the movie is quick to confirm that his filmmaking sensibilities and his twisted sense of humor are still very much alive. The big hurdle for Send Help is that it is a movie that builds and builds, but doesn’t offer a lot in its final moments. Despite two compelling leads tasked with carrying the entire movie on their shoulders, and plenty of entertaining sequences throughout, Send Help isn’t totally memorable by the end.

Rating: 3 out of 5

PROS	CONS
Great performances	Some visual effects don’t hold up
Raimi’s trademark gags are still entertaining	The ending falls flat

Send Help Is Anchored By Its Two Leads

In Send Help, Rachel McAdams plays Linda Liddle, a “Planning & Strategy” employee who always goes above and beyond for her employer but is never recognized for her effort. An element of the film that is funny from an outside view is how much it tries to make McAdams appear dour and homely at the start, giving her a plain-Jane aesthetic, as well as a lonely home life where she’s flanked by books about survival and her pet bird. McAdams, being the charisma magnet that she is, is still super funny and compelling despite the movie putting her in a box like this; that said, it’s all done in the service of what Linda goes through next.

Opposite Adams is Dylan O’Brien’s Bradley Preston, the new CEO who is taking over the company after his father’s death (a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo by Raimi stalwart Bruce Campbell). To put it mildly, Bradley is a blowhard, more concerned with his image and making money with as little personal effort as possible. “Silver spoon” barely covers his upbringing. That these traits are made so clear so instantly (and are also so immediately grating) is only possible by the fact that O’Brien’s performance is near-perfect. He embodies the exact persona we’re all so familiar with: clueless executives who don’t actually know how to do the work and just want to cash a check for your hard work.

When confronted by Linda about being passed over for a promotion his father promised her, Bradley gives her the chance to prove herself on a company trip to Thailand. Naturally, they both get more than they bargained for when the private company plane crashes on the way to the event, sending them onto the shores of an uninhabited, tropical island miles from nowhere. What follows is basically Linda’s dream scenario, an opportunity to prove her worth by utilizing all the skills she’s collected, but also her nightmare, as her boss attempts to maintain their office dynamic despite the two of them being in a survival scenario.

Send Help Lets Sam Raimi Stretch His Horror Muscles Again

What follows is a series of scenarios where Linda shows off her ability to fully survive off the grid, with Bradley largely failing to pull his weight in any meaningful way. The film explores its premise with plenty of surprises and laughs, like Linda already knowing how to catch rainwater, build a shelter, and weave herself a backpack, all while Bradley can barely manage to even exist without help. The most interesting thing about all these scenes, though, is how… normal they are. This may come as a surprise to fans of Sam Raimi’s erratic style and tones, but it’s, in fact, a secret weapon of Send Help.

By having long swaths of the movie really toe the line of a domestic drama that happens to be set on an uninhabited island, Sam Raimi forces the audience to lower their guard, meaning that when his trademark kinetic energy is unlocked, it takes you completely by surprise. The earliest example of this is when the film spends a decent amount of time having Linda set up their camp while getting Bradley caught up to speed on their situation. After seeing tracks in the sand that appear to be from a boar, Linda goes off on the hunt, which is, naturally, the time Raimi deploys his shaky POV cam made famous by The Evil Dead, before the hunt culminates in a comical amount of blood and gore. The scene lands hard as both a dramatic moment and a punchline because the movie has spent so long getting there.

Raimi repeatedly weaponizes this over the course of the movie, and frankly, it works almost every time. The film allows McAdams and O’Brien to dig a little deeper into their characters, find the vulnerability that they’re willing to share, explore a shade of something that didn’t seem possible from either, and after about 10 minutes of letting that simmer, Send Help will hit you with something disgusting and hilarious. There’s one scene where O’Brien attempts a botched solo escape, believing he can survive on his own, only for his hastily assembled idea to dissolve in front of him, sending him back to shore to be saved once again by McAdams’ Linda, who promptly pukes on his face four times.

On top of Raimi’s sensibilities giving the film the most juice and laughs, perhaps the funniest thing about the island sequences is that as Linda fully embraces her element, she gains a sheen that isn’t found in the office. McAdams is literally glowing about halfway through the film, while O’Brien starts to become a husk of a person. There’s another flip side to this, though, where Send Help lets both actors linger on the sinister side of both of their characters. While O’Brien’s is pretty clear from the start, the arrival of Linda’s playful malevolence is yet another indicator that McAdams is one of our most versatile performers.

Send Help Ends With a Whimper

Two things drag Send Help down, though. The first is the pacing. Despite largely pulling off the trick of settling into the thriller elements of the film, only for Raimi to indulge in his bag of tricks, at times, it becomes tedious, especially as new twists and surprises make themselves known. Nothing ever breaks from what has been established with the characters, but from the point of being an observer, there’s a repetition that doesn’t always click after the fourth or fifth attempt. The second is that the film does not seamlessly blend its exotic filming locations with some visual effects. Send Help‘s cast are clearly on a beach in much of the film, but some scenes are stuck on a soundstage, with visual effects filling in the environment around them. It’s a distracting fault of modern filmmaking, and one that does pull you out of the action.

By the conclusion of Send Help, the story has unfortunately run out of steam, which leads to a third act that completely lacks surprise but also feels like well-tread territory by films that have preceded it. On top of that, there are only so many times that double-crosses and backstabbings can be deployed before they no longer become effective. In terms of the narrative’s trajectory, it’s a conclusion that makes sense, but it’s one that almost feels too tame, especially given Raimi’s tenure as a filmmaker. As a result, when the credits roll after the final sequence, the fun of what came earlier in the movie is gone, and you’re left lingering with the afterthought of the final minutes that failed to live up to that potential.

Send Help is an entertaining horror-thriller that will easily satisfy fans of Raimi’s past work, who like to see him blend his horror sensibilities with Three Stooges-inspired gags and grossout moments that make you laugh and cringe. Fans of Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien will find a lot to like as well, as the two remain confident and engaging performers, but the story itself gets stretched to a predictable breaking point. It’s unfortunate that Raimi waited more than a decade to get back to his genre roots and ended the drought with a film that empties its tank fast.