‘Send Help’ Movie Review: Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien Shine in Sam Raimi’s Darkly Comic Survival Thriller

Sam Raimi returns evil dead Will be waiting for the roots in the new year. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness The director mostly delivers with a fair amount of gore, boar-hunting and eye-popping. This meek-shall-inherit-the-Earth journey is entirely satisfying – until one character makes a call that puts them firmly on the naughty list and stops us rooting for them in our tracks.

As a result, instead of being exciting and uplifting, the denouement feels a bit hollow, leaving ashes in the mouth instead of the sweet taste of a good victory.

Linda (Rachel McAdams) is a talented and conscientious worker in her company’s planning and strategy department. However, her people skills are lacking, and her coworkers always laugh at her, even as they take credit for her work.

Everything changes when Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) takes over the company after his father’s death. Bradley’s father promises Linda that she will be promoted when Bradley takes over. The promise is broken when Bradley promotes his college friend, Donovan (Xavier Samuel). Bradley is a standard-issue man who treats everyone, including his fiancée, Zuri (Adil Ismail), with a mixture of condescension and authority.

Although Bradley, whom Linda dislikes, wants to push him into a closed part of the business, Franklin (Dennis Haysbert), a senior executive, says that Donovan will not be able to manage the important upcoming merger. Bradley asks Linda to come to the merger with the idea of ​​using her expertise until the deal is closed, before exiling her to an obscure position.

On the flight to Bangkok, when Bradley and Donovan were laughing at Linda’s audition tape survivorThe plane’s engine malfunctions and it crashes into the sea. Only Linda and Bradley reach shore on a deserted island off the Gulf of Thailand.

A scene from ‘Send Help’ Photo Credit: 20th Century Studio

The dice have now turned precisely because of Linda’s endless observation survivor Has all the skills needed to live off the land. Bradley fights repeatedly against a perceived loss of control – a control he never really had, having merely inherited the company created by his father. It’s just that on the island, the language of their civilization has been stripped of existence and power.

McAdams plays her role with gusto, and we’re rooting for her as she transforms from office nerd to skilled survivalist. McAdams and O’Brien are the only two people on screen for most of the film and they do the heavy lifting, micro-aggressions escalating to full-scale war, so they attack each other.

There’s gore, eye candy (in 3D, no less) and grossness as well as humor. The island is gorgeous and could have been Eden, if only timid human nature would allow it to be.

Psychological survival thrillers may or may not include all types of reading. send help It can also be enjoyed as an excellent exercise in extreme what ifs, provided one can accept the choices Linda makes when anything else is advisable for survival.

Send Help is currently playing in theaters