Send Help (review) - Cinerama Film

When your cast is this strong and your sense of tone is this dexterously colourful, one can’t help but get lost in the grim but exuberant storytelling of Send Help.

Whether it’s bizarre comedy, gory horror, a mix of both, or his take on Spider-Man, Sam Raimi’s skill set often amounts to compelling characters and a unique visual and tonal style. Even among filmmakers today, his work has a way of leaving a deep, imprinted impression. Send Help is Raimi’s first original directorial effort since 2009’s creatively frightening Drag Me to Hell, and it continues to showcase his knack for strange yet immersive storytelling. It leaves you horrified at one minute and laughing at the next.

The always charming Rachel McAdams plays Linda Liddel, a meek corporate strategist. Having worked at her company for 7 years, she’s guaranteed a promotion to vice president due to her eye for detail and dedication. However, when her boss is succeeded as CEO by his young, callous son Bradley (Dylan O’Brien), Linda’s promotion is squashed in favour of Bradley’s fraternity buddy. Furthermore, Linda’s clumsy quirks become a source of ridicule.

While accompanying Bradley on a business trip to Bangkok, the plane encounters a severe storm and crashes into the sea. Linda and Bradley, the only survivors, wash up on a remote island in the Gulf of Thailand. While Bradley immediately tries to enforce their previous hierarchy, Linda’s extensive survival skills, learned from her religious viewing of survival shows, make her the stronger link in the duo. As the two make camp and await rescue, the shifting dynamics between them threaten to reach a boiling point.

Despite how justifiably popular his Spider-Man and Evil Dead films are, Raimi’s best work remains 1998’s A Simple Plan, primarily for how it rivetingly challenged its characters through nuanced, morally grey dilemmas. Send Help convenes in a grey area of its own: corporate hierarchies, the lack of humanity the worst ones trade in, and how they are solidified or destroyed in times of crisis. It satirises the way mediocre men like Bradley ascend to the top by piggybacking off another generation’s success, only to flail like a beached fish once faced with any real challenge. In contrast, the Lindas of the world are more equipped than they’re ever given credit for. Putting these archetypes together in a perilous environment where coexistence is unavoidable is a superb generator of conflict, as two polarising life experiences are mercilessly tested by Mother Nature, their primal instincts having no choice but to take over.

An immersive blend of horror and comedy is born from this, despite the film’s labelling as a survival film. The film plays out as a power-based tug-of-war as the characters gradually begin to open up to one another, yet scheme to assume the role of alpha, for lack of a better label. Raimi and writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift never undermine the horror – wide shots highlight the isolation of the characters’ circumstances, while the threat of wild boars, starvation, and perilous terrain remains omnipresent.

Nevertheless, the film is unafraid to bask in the absurdity of the premise and to exaggerate exchanges to make characters seem all the more hyperbolic. Close-ups greatly aid this, with Bradley and Linda’s first interaction defined by a piece of tuna stuck to Linda’s face. During a midpoint betrayal, an exchange involving a paralysed Bradley, Linda wielding a hot knife, and a threat of castration proves both dark and hilarious, the close-ups of Bradley’s face being a knee-slapper in themselves. It’s a film that’s content being both serious and unserious simultaneously.

Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien make for a terrific duo, their mercurial chemistry amplifying the black humour, the bloody horror and the deeper themes underneath. While best known for YA movies like The Maze Runner, O’Brien is a deceptively formidable actor, especially when paired with the right material. His portrayal of conniving entitlement and pathetic childishness, with just a smidge of earnest vulnerability fuelling it all, is a joy to watch as our desire to punch Bradley in the face is matched only by our admiration of O’Brien’s work.

Linda is McAdam’s first feature performance since her sublime, criminally underappreciated work in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Capturing both the awkward and sincere dimensions of Linda marvellously, McAdams generates charisma, empathy and even chills. Linda’s growth in confidence, as her skills allow her to challenge the previous hierarchy she was being crushed under, paves the way for as many bleak developments as amusing ones.

Towards the final act, Send Help starts to muddy its own waters unnecessarily. It employs several twists that showcase the increasing greyness of the characters’ personalities and nuances in their thinking. For the most part, this feels suitable, given Raimi’s style. However, once the crisis point is reached, the film pulls one rug too many, leaving the otherwise interesting nuances a touch convoluted. There’s still plenty of empathy to go around, and a case can be made that it explores how we revert to primal urges in our worst states, but it somewhat undermines the critique of hierarchies the film aimed to create.

But when your cast is this strong and your sense of tone is this dexterously colourful, one can’t help but get lost in the grim but exuberant storytelling. Send Help basks in the playful macabreness that makes Raimi such a hypnotic director, delivering with delightfully gruesome visuals and amusing characters and themes that still give pause for thought. Whatever steam it gradually loses, it makes up for with charismatic performances and skilled, wilful chaos. Plus, in true Sam Raimi fashion, all of this is accompanied by enough broken bones and waterfalls of blood to make the Hellraiser films jealous.

Send Help is now showing in cinemas nationwide.

Film and Television » Send Help (review) – a movie that basks in the playful macabreness that makes Raimi such a hypnotic director