‘Send Help’: Rachel McAdams Shines in Sam Raimi’s Gritty Tale of Survival and Power Dynamics
The horror maestro has returned, and he is as mean as ever. “Send Help” is Sam Raimi’s first film in four years, making its way to big screens with all of the messy gore that we’ve come to expect. More importantly, he’s delivered another long-awaited entry into the unofficial “good for her” genre in his reunion with Rachel McAdams.
The film follows Linda (McAdams), whose corporate dreams are dashed when the former president of her company hands his role off to his son, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien). You see, his father had promised Linda a promotion to vice president due to her impressive analytical skills. Bradley, on the other hand, is deeply offended that Linda doesn’t bother herself with traditional beauty or impressing him in the way he believes a woman should. More importantly, she didn’t attend his frat in college and doesn’t play golf. As such, Bradley hands off the VP position to his lackadaisical bestie who is constantly passing off Linda’s work as his own. It doesn’t feel like too much of a spoiler to tell you that said bestie’s name doesn’t matter. He doesn’t live long. (Although Xavier Samuel plays him with plenty of smarm before his final moments.)
When Linda stands up for herself, Bradley invites her on a leadership trip to Bangkok in hopes that she will solve a problem that the rest of the team can’t seem to crack. The plane goes down, leaving only Bradley and Linda washed ashore. Bradley is, as expected of a nepo baby brat focused solely on physical appearance, utterly useless. Linda, on the other hand, has spent years obsessing over “Survivor” and immediately sets out to use her skills to keep them both alive.
Damian Shannon and Mark Swift deliver quite a successful screenplay with “Send Help,” illustrating the shifting power dynamics subtly at first before turning the dial up to eleven. You might expect from the poster that Bradley and Linda are attacked by either locals or — given that this is a Raimi movie — some kind of demonic force looking to make their island “getaway” worse, but you’d be wrong. A combination of nature, panic and power grabs all put the two survivors through the ringer, but the only enemies they have on the island are each other. Worry not, there’s no disappointment to be had with the grounded storyline, with McAdams and O’Brien playing off of each other like gangbusters.
What’s far less successful — and the film’s most obvious blemish — are the effects. Though the story is grounded in reality, “Send Help”’s reliance on digital blood rather than practical effects in many scenes looks just awful, and many of the effects are laughably bad for the same reason. It might be less noticeable in a film helmed by a different director, but we’ve all rightfully come to expect more from Raimi. Thankfully, closeup shots and scenes not rooted in action focus on practical effects. Still, it’s hard to imagine who thought the rest looked good.
The ever booked and busy Danny Elfman delivered an unsurprisingly great score to accompany Shannon and Swift’s script, elevating Linda’s journey in a wonderfully disconcerting fashion as the control shifts to her rather than Bradley. Said score adds impressive depth to McAdams’ already stellar performance which, while expected from Elfman, is also a difficult feat because McAdams is just so, so good here.
The actor’s shift from mousy and unassuming to confident survivor isn’t just emotional, but visual as well. In the first act, we see Linda completely turned inward. While she’s hunching and demure at first (even in private, with her bird Sweetie), we see a transformation once Linda finds her footing on the island. Her greasy hair becomes wild and more textured with the ocean air, her exhausted eyes begin to sparkle, and her shoulders are squared in determination to keep herself and her idiot boss alive. Some of the accomplishment of the physical shift undoubtedly rests with the hair and makeup department, but McAdams’ performance is impossible to undervalue here. Of course, her journey only works with O’Brien being willing to be stepped on as the ceaselessly intolerable Bradley, so don’t write his performance off either!
No matter where you think “Send Help” is going, you’re probably wrong. Thankfully, that’s a huge part of its appeal. It’s not a mystery, by any means. But it is a story rooted in the exploration of human nature and exactly who we become if it means survival both in the literal and figurative sense.
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