Dallas Film Now.

Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien star in Sam Raimi’s new darkly comic, modest thrill ride. 

From its very first minute, Send Help self-identifies as a nervy comedy of discomfort. 

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is introduced as an unassertive, 30-something accountant — sorry, she is in Strategy and Development — who dresses in dowdy clothing, eats tuna sandwiches at her desk, and has no social skills whatsoever. Her former boss (Bruce Campbell, who makes a cameo appearance as a photograph on a wall in the opening sequence) loved her work, though, and promised her an appointment to Vice President, which she reminds her immediate supervisor, even as she watches him take credit for her work. 

Her beloved former boss is replaced by his son, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), a classic nepo baby who has no idea how to run his father’s company but knows for a certainty that Linda doesn’t fit in, with her frumpy appearance and smelly lunches. Still, because of her work ethic, he decides to invite her along on a business trip to Thailand, which she can help her bosses close an important deal. Then she can be summarily fired. 

The opening sequence is filled with incredibly obvious foreboding that verges on the intolerably insulting, were it not that director Sam Raimi pushes it all so far over the top that we are absolutely certain that all the bosses will get what’s coming to them, and poor Linda will get what’s coming for her. All we have to do is wait. 

Moments later, the middle managers are bowing down to the new president on his private jet, which promptly dispenses with the middle managers and leaves Linda and Bradley on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean. It’s good thing that Linda has been studying survival guides for years, so she can someday become a participant on TV’s Survivor! 

The script conjured up by Hollywood veterans Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, who made their mark years ago with Freddy vs. Jason (2003) and Friday the 13th (2009), as well as Baywatch (2017) and, no doubt, a bevy of other screenplays, sounds thuddingly obvious and predictable on paper, like a videocassette of a movie that we’ve all seen before. To a large extent, that’s true: it is quite predictable in the outline of its narrative twists and turns, and watching it may elicit very few surprises for frequent viewers of Hollywood entertainment. 

Yet it has two big elements in its favor: Sam Raimi and Rachel McAdams, who reunite after working together on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). In that sequel, McAdams only had a supporting role; even so, over the years she has adroitly demonstrated her ability to handle light comic banter, deep dramatic moments, and flighty thrillers. 

As a director, Raimi has never been shy about attacking a variety of genres and making them his own, which he does here by emphasizing Linda Liddle’s brittle nature and deep reservoir of survival skills, which mix together with the seven years she has endured working at a company that does not appreciate her complete range of talents. Linda has been waiting for an opportunity to shine and, alone on the island with Bradley, she must shine if they are to survive. 

Dylan O’Brien captures the oily charm of a newly-born businessman, who relies on his circle of frat-boy junior execs to flatter him as he deceives himself into thinking that he can easily fill his father’s shoes, and that he doesn’t need the assistance of a woman, especially one who is not young and good-looking, and doesn’t worship the ground that he walks upon. 

The advance screening that I attended was presented in 2D, which I thoroughly enjoyed for the darkly comic tone that Sam Raimi established in the opening moments, and for the action that he choreographs in support of that tone, which is so knowingly outrageous that it can’t possibly be taken seriously. In a similar vein, he films certain sequences with an obvious wink at the 3D cameras, which are guaranteed to gross out audiences with a cheerful gusto that he first exhibited in Evil Dead II (1987), where the gore and body horror flew way over the top. 

Here, the element of surprise is calculated to keep injecting jolts of broad humor that may be questionable in taste, even as they fit into the completely satisfying, darkly outrageous, and contagiously amusing Send Help. 

The film opens wide Friday, January 30, in movie theaters and in 3-D throughout Dallas/Fort Worth, via 20th Century Studios.  For locations and showtimes, visit the official site.