“We’re not in the office anymore, Bradley.” Linda (Rachel McAdams)
Sam Raimi has done it again with Send Help, a darkly funny survivalist romp with Rachel McAdams showing she can out misery Kathy Bates and charm like Tom Hanks in the most challenging survivalist, tropic island adventure. Linda and her boss, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien), are stuck together on a Gulf of Thai island, he with no skills other than blather and she uber Girl-Scout skills.
While Raimi indulges his Evil-Dead inclinations and Quick and Dead sharp-tongued repartee, it’s his ability to feature the sexist divide elevating that battle to a satisfactory rivalry with the distaff side showing strength and resilience. When she subdues a wild hog for protein and builds a lattice-work palm fronds compound, you can feel the battle of the sexes going into modern feminist territory.
Bradley is not without BS skills but barely enough to survive her Mean-Girls attitude. He after all inherits his presidency from dad and sets himself up for putting her down at corporate. Dad did promise her a promotion, after all, which Bradley won’t honor.
McAdams supplies much-needed black humor while O’Brien is as self-centered as many modern privileged young men.Raimi is ready to destroy that profile in favor of under-rated feminists.
Send Help needs no help being a dark survivor tale with plenty of social commentary, gorgeous cinematography, amd a director who can use drone shots with the best of them.
Send Help
Director: Sam Raimi (A Simple Plan, Evil Dead)
Screenplay: Damien Shannon, Mark Swift
Cast: Rachel McAdams (Red Eye), Dylan O’Brian (The Outfit)
Rating: R
Length: 1h 53 m
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio.Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com.