Grisly-fun Sam Raimi comedy-thriller Send Help (now streaming on Hulu, in addition to VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) finds star Rachel McAdams altering her screen persona from mean girl to mousy and back. She’s the put-upon employee at the office. Costar Dylan O’Brien is the asshat CEO who treats her like crud. And what might happen if they find themselves stranded on a tropical island? The power dynamic shifts, that’s what, and Raimi – genius behind the Evil Deads and Spider-Mans – gets a primo opportunity to return to his gonzo roots. And to return to form.
SEND HELP: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Like so many of us, Linda Liddle (McAdams) contains multitudes. She shops from the frump rack at TJ Maxx, her pet bird is her closest confidant, the book 1,000 Ways to be Alone sits on her shelf and her tuna fish breath makes us all grateful this movie isn’t presented in Smell-O-Vision. But she’s the most competent mid-level corporate strategist at work, which is a hellishly generic pile of TPS reports and executive expense vouchers passing for a corporation. The old boss of whatever this company is and does – his photo is on the wall, and it’s Bruce Campbell! – promised her a VP gig, but now that his son Bradley (O’Brien) has taken over, that ain’t gonna happen. Linda tries to talk to Bradley and all he sees, hears and smells is tuna fish tuna fish tuna fish.
So what we have here is the dorkus-malorkus in dookie-brown Hush Puppies pining for a promotion and the misogynist failson boss in $900 loafers (with no socks) giving the hard no. He’d rather promote his former frat-bro fartsniffer so they can go golfing when they’re not barely pretending to work. You know the type – you talk to them and all we see, hear and smell is golf golf golf. But Linda’s ability to do all the work and let everyone else take the credit means she has to join these dudes on the company jet to a conference in Thailand, and while she works during the flight, they pull up her Survivor audition tape and openly ridicule it. That’s among her multitudes, you see. And those multitudes might come in handy should the plane crash into the ocean and she and Bradley are the only survivors to wash up on the beach of a deserted island. Which is exactly what happens.
Bradley’s worse for wear, with a banged-up leg, and considering there are no golf clubs or putting greens nearby, he’s useless. But Linda is tough as nails and ready to rock, building shelter out of leaves, vines and limbs, collecting water in coconut shells and fashioning a spear so she can murder the living Christ out of a warthog for dinner. She tromps through the jungle in those Hush Puppies, splattered with blood and lugging the animal’s head around with a big gleaming smile on her face. Hmm – curious. Being rather characteristically numb of nuts, Bradley tries to maintain his superiority, but it doesn’t work: “We’re not in the office anymore, Bradley,” Linda reminds him. He’s dependent on her for food and water and shelter. But what if his leg heals? What if she finds a knife? What if he learns which berries are poisonous? What if she has to perform CPR on him while she’s puking up the poison berries into his mouth? And who’s ready to place bets on the winner of this little physio-psychological battle?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? I promise it’s not a spoiler to compare McAdams’ wily-entertaining performance to Kathy Bates’ in Misery. Otherwise, I can confirm that Sam Raimi’s New Yorker Cartoon finds the ever-inspired director back in superlative Drag Me to Hell mode – as we all hoped would be true.
Performance Worth Watching: What about “compare McAdams’ wily-entertaining performance to Kathy Bates’ in Misery” did you not understand? Linda Liddle might just be the most dynamic character of McAdams’ career, and of course she’s game for it.
Sex And Skin: The inevitable naked butt shot (male, if you’re curious). I mean, they’re on a deserted island with little resources. Butts will be, and must be, aired out from time to time.
Our Take: Sure, that’s a sinister glint in Linda’s eye, but what exactly is she capable of? Such is the joy of watching Send Help, where McAdams reminds us that she most recently was the absolute sweetheart mom in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, but she’s still capable of channeling some Regina George-level malice. And then some, perhaps, he said, sidestepping spoilers and pointing at the movie poster with a knife-wielding McAdams howling in front of a blood-red sky.
Smartly, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift’s screenplay leans away from girlbossy-feminist cliches and finds something more complex and ambiguous in the battle-of-the-sexes power plays between Linda and Bradley. Hence, the multitudes – good people are capable of bad and bad people are capable of good, and those who struggle with films that offer no clear-cut protagonist/antagonist moral dichotomies may want to fire up a Disney cartoon instead. Its sharply honed ambiguity keeps us guessing as we’re led through all the necessary twists and turns. And the film is unapologetically and delectably nasty – more so than the PG-13 Drag Me to Hell – and those of us who get choked up when Raimi unleashes his high-speed POV shots (here, it’s the warthog cam) and Looney Tunes violence wouldn’t want it any other way.
The director gleefully dusts off and polishes the dynamic camera movements that established him as a true innovator and influence in Hollywood – and then trots out the buckets of blood as he puts McAdams and O’Brien through the wringer, much to our delight. Raimi doles out his signature cartoonish exaggeration with just enough stinginess to make the big moments pop (like an eyeball full of gloop? Yeah, sure, like an eyeball full of gloop), and carefully balances it with the characters’ subtle psychological warfare. The sicko-laughs are big and long and bellowing, and beyond slicing up the notion of desperation into a few subtle variations, Send Help doesn’t aspire to be much more than a slightly elevated B-movie driven by McAdams’ wonderfully cracked performance. “Don’t ever mistake my kindness for weakness,” Linda righteously spits at a key moment. Amen, sister.
Our Call: Send Help meets and occasionally exceeds expectations for late-career Raimi nuttiness. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.