Sam Raimi’s “Send Help” is a delightful example of kitchen sink filmmaking, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the breadth and influence of his career. As the generation-defining “Evil Dead” auteur who somehow bridged the gap between gonzo demon horror and prestige superhero spectacle, Raimi has always shown a remarkable scope in his storytelling; somehow able to find the humanity in everything from burn scarred pseudo-vigilantes (“Dark Man”) to a trio of hapless midwesterners who happen upon a crashed plane full of money (“A Simple Plan”). “Send Help”, working from a script by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (“Freddy VS. Jason”), presents as the simple premise of “Misery” meets “Cast Away”, only with the power dynamics and sympathies of the audience flipped. That’s a fantastic elevator pitch, concise and easily imagined, that could yield a perfectly adequate B-tier horror picture; a gore-fest of cannibalistic chaos and uber-violence that would fulfill the bloodlust of a rabid January horror audience. But “Send Help” aspires for something more, and, with the help of two of the best actors working today, Raimi is able to bring us a crowd-pleasing and shocking theater-going experience that will have you squirming, laughing, and, most importantly, cheering.
“Send Help” follows Linda Liddle (the sublime Rachel McAdams), a quirky, well-meaning numbers savant who has doggedly paid her dues from a crusty little cubicle at a Fortune 500 tech company and is soon to receive the long-overdue fruits of her labor by being promoted to Vice President. The CEO of the company, Bruce Campbell, in his patented Raimi cameo, has passed, leaving the company to his layabout son Bradley (the slimy Dylan O’Brien), who means to remake the organization in his own dude bro image by promoting his Patrick Bateman cosplaying frat buddy to the VP spot meant for Linda. As a means of satiating his distraught “quant”, Bradley invites Linda along with the company brain trust on a private flight to Bangkok to finalize a merger, to, as he puts it, prove her worth. In reality, Linda finds herself as the mid-flight entertainment when Bradley and his suspenders squad pull up her audition video for her favorite TV show, “Survivor”. See, Linda loves “Survivor” and hopes to one day compete on the show itself. Her apartment is filled with books on knots, shelter construction, fire building, the works. It’s a lovely dream, a dream she is forced to watch be mocked by the very men who unjustly rule over her future. That is, until the plane reaches turbulence. In shockingly short order, a hole is ripped into the side of the fuselage, and the entire plane crashes into the Gulf of Thailand. Linda is able to scramble her way to shore, amid the corpses of her co-workers, and finds only a single other survivor: Bradley, unconscious, with his leg sliced open and unusable. Left with only her wits and a lifetime of accumulated survival knowledge, Linda sets about constructing for them a life; shelter, fresh water, the works. While the ungrateful Bradley whines from his frond-covered beach bed, Linda realizes that she actually has the skills needed to not just survive, but thrive in this tropical seclusion. At the same time, the spoiled rich boy comes to understand something as well: the power dynamics that hefted him onto his unearned ivory pedestal don’t exist out here, and he, for the first time in his life, may be under the iron thumb of a boss as ruthless and unforgiving as he was.
It’s fair to say that Rachel McAdams is one of the most dynamic and talented actors of the last fifty years. A true movie star who eagerly allows herself to be utilized as a character actor whenever possible, McAdams is in top form working with Raimi, allowing Linda to transform before our eyes from a mousy oddball into the assertive, dominant, and at times terrifying survivor that, as we learn in one of the film’s best sequences as she gets sloshed on home-fermented wine by the fire, she perhaps always was. Rare is an actor so willing to throw themselves into the absurd caricatures required of a genre film with as much care and a complete lack of vanity as McAdams does. Early in the film, as the pair are running short on food, Linda takes a spear and decides to venture into the forest in search of a wild boar for dinner. She finds one in and is horrified to realize that this is no ordinary piggy; this is a hell hog from a Sam Raimi movie, a snarling, spittle-spewing rage beast that very nearly rips her throat out. But Linda is able to get the upper hand, spearing it several times before landing a killing blow through its blood red eyeball. (Fair warning for the ommetaphobics in the crowd, there’s quite a bit of wonderfully goopy eye stuff at play here.) Linda returns to camp and tosses the pig’s head at Bradley’s feet, slathered in blood and invigorated by the experience. “You ever been hunting?” she asks her stunned former boss, “I think I like it.”
As far as smarmy millennial nepo-bosses are concerned, Dylan O’Brien might be the only actor who could conceivably portray someone so scuzzy, abusive, and wholly distasteful with a perceptible hint of relatability. As the false authority that capitalism has afforded him is shown to be a fantasy out in the real world, O’Brien’s gradual descent along the knife’s edge of horror at his situation is inherently comical, making it also all the more true to life. It doesn’t take long for Bradley to realize that Linda might not just be enjoying their time in secluded paradise, but she could be actively sabotaging potential rescue in an effort to stay longer, a life sentence built for two that he has no interest in signing up for. Thus begins the film’s second half, where, inconceivably, the audience’s loyalties are allowed to split between the savage Linda and the subservient Bradley, caught in a cat-and-mouse game of one-upmanship with neither knowing who can and cannot be trusted.
While the film’s status as “Misery on a Beach” is not unfounded, it is the subtleties of characters, their understandably selfish motivations, and our inherent biases that make for a wholly unique movie-going experience. A lesser film would have doubled down on the body horror, not unlike Annie Wilkes hobbling Paul Sheldon, leaving the film to be about a psycho woman finally allowed to unleash her baser natures and the man desperate to simply survive living with the employee from hell. Thankfully, Raimi has no interest in telling a surface-level story, with Shannon and Swift’s screenplay ever forefronting Linda, even at her most megalomaniacal, as our protagonist and emotional lynchpin. We’ve all had bad bosses before, all been made to feel small and helpless under the fluorescent lights of a cubicle office, all been forced to take a quick five minutes in the car to cry and summon the courage to step back inside with a smile as if nothing had ever happened. The wish fulfillment of “Send Help” is a primal one, as tangible and universal an experience as breathing or, seemingly, being a fan of “Survivor”. Norman Bates once opined that “we all go a little mad sometimes,” and that may be true, but what if a little madness is justified? In a world where power dynamics are cast by the lots of the universe, rarely on merit and often on cruelty, why wouldn’t we cheer Linda getting what she wants for once in her life? It’s her dream to live out a “Survivor” adventure, to prove she can outwit, outplay, and outlast in a hostile world, and I contend she deserves it. Don’t we all.
“Send Help” is a riot with a shocking level of depth that showcases Sam Raimi as the all-time great moviemaker that he is. Having only made three films in the last ten years, anytime we get a new Raimi picture in cinemas, it’s worthy of celebration. But when it’s something this original, this nuanced, this bloody and entertaining, consider us eagerly, ravenously, sat.
Have fun with the eye stuff.
You’ll be glad you did.
“Send Help” is playing at Prytania Theatres at Canal Place.
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