“Send Help” doesn’t need help with acquiring good actors or a plot that makes you want to find out how it ends. But it’s another of those 2020s movies that’s cynically flat, made by veteran moviemakers for savvy movie watchers who have seen it all.
Essentially a story of two strong characters seeking the upper hand, director Sam Raimi’s film has the potential to rise toward the brilliant commentary of something like “Pearl” but can’t get there. It stays safely above the nothingburger level of something like “Anaconda” ’25, though.
Linda (a Rachel McAdams so dressed down that the makeup team probably had her arrive extra early) is a sociable but awkward unsung talent amid her flatland of cubicles. The boss is the late owner’s son, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien, “Teen Wolf”). A spot for his second-in-command is open, and he’s going to give it to his newly hired frat-mate rather than veteran Linda. But on a trip to Thailand for a merger, they need Linda along since she does crucial, unacknowledged work.
“Send Help” (2026)
Director: Sam Raimi
Writers: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift
Stars: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail
Cynicism blunts the statement
Though “Send Help” could be read as a gender-bias commentary, it’s more interesting for its exploration of social-skills bias. Linda doesn’t know how to play the game. But she has an extra quirk of being a “Survivor” nerd, and she has absorbed how to “outwit, outplay, outlast.” When the plane crashes near an empty island and only she and Bradley survive, the playing field is leveled because she knows how to start a fire, gather rainwater and identify safe fruits.
Plotted with an instinct toward plausibility by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (whose credits date back to 2003’s “Freddy vs. Jason,” but this is their first non-IP script), and shot on a gorgeous Australian beach, “Send Help” settles into that modern toneless vibe. It almost suggests dark comedy, but nothing is memorably funny. It’s pleasantly whimsical, but when it switches gears to serious stakes, it’s hard to buy it.
Unlike Linda, Raimi can’t quite get a spark from rubbing two sticks together. He’s unable to go deep into the intrinsic conflict between Linda and Bradley, the new alpha dethroning the old. A great version of “Send Help” would be a whirlwind character study wherein Linda and Bradley trade off being victim and villain, depending on carefully calibrated circumstances; but “Send Help” is merely a rain shower. The director’s instincts for over-the-top gore and shocks are likewise handcuffed, a sequence of Linda slaughtering a wild boar notwithstanding.
After a well-earned twist, the coda makes a wise statement about how a decent and unassuming person has to change themselves in order to win in modern society. They can’t simply do their job well and treat people kindly. They have to outwit and outlast.
It’s appropriately cold but it made me think of superior films like “Pearl” and “The Substance” (which prove 2020s cynicism can be mastered). I wish “Send Help’s” coda was the chilled desert to cap a gourmet meal rather than fast food.