Having recently been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Rachel McAdams is one of those actors who engenders goodwill in the industry and among fans, and she’s certainly not an overlooked talent. Still, McAdams is such a low-key and grounded artist that I wonder if we give her enough credit for the range she has displayed in films ranging from “Mean Girls” to “The Notebook,” from “Spotlight” to “Midnight in Paris” to Season 2 of “True Detective.” (She has just one Oscar nomination, for “Spotlight.”)
As much as I’ve admired McAdams’ work through the years, she gives what just might be the best performance of her career in Sam Raimi’s fantastically gory, darkly funny, and twist-filled “Send Help.” This is one of the most entertaining films I’ve seen in recent years—a desert island survival tale that plays like a warped mash-up of “Swept Away,” “Six Days, Seven Nights,” and “Triangle of Sadness.” (“Send Help” was in development years before the release of the latter film; the similarities between certain plot points of the two are pure coincidence.)
The screenplay by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift is sharp and funny, and contains knowing insights about misogyny in the workplace and the shifting dynamic between a toxic male boss and an overlooked and mistreated female employee. Mostly, though, “Send Help” is about paying your ticket for an R-rated, Sam Raimi thrill ride with projectile vomiting, flying ropes of blood, and a handful of scenes that fly so off the rails that you wonder if we’re in the middle of a dream sequence, or the mayhem is real.
It’s no easy task to frump up McAdams, but the physicality of her performance and her too-loud manner of speaking (combined with the hair, makeup, and wardrobe squad) have us instantly buying into her character, the aggressively cheerful and socially odious Linda Liddle, who excels as a manager in the Planning & Strategy department of Preston Strategic Solutions. (This is one of those Fortune 500-looking Movie Companies with rows of cubicles and glass-walled conference rooms, where we never really learn what the heck everybody is doing.) The company’s CEO had promised Linda a promotion to vice-president, but when he dies (off-screen), the reins are handed to his glad-handing, chauvinistic, frat-bro son, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien), who bluntly informs Linda that he sees no value in her as executive material. In a half-hearted effort to appease Linda before she’s permanently relegated to the sidelines or even the unemployment line, Bradley invites Linda to accompany his team on a business trip to Thailand—and that’s when the bleep-storm hits the fan.
A nightmare of a storm tears the company plane into pieces, resulting in the gruesome and frankly hilariously rendered deaths of everyone on board—with the exception of Linda and Bradley, who wash up on a tiny island somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand. (Programming note: Rachel McAdams and airplanes make for quite the harrowing mix, what with “Red Eye,” the famously memed henchman-sucked-into-the—jet-turbine-engine scene in “Game Night,” and now this crash.) We know Linda has a skill set that will come in handy, as we’ve seen the photos and trinkets in her home commemorating Outward Bound-type trips, not to mention her audition tape for the TV competition show “Survivor.” We know the pampered Bradley is ill-equipped to go without creature comforts, given his penchant for wearing velvet loafers with no socks, and his passion for golf and the country club lifestyle. With Bradley laid up due to a gruesome leg injury and Linda speaking in corny aphorisms as she tends to his wounds, fishes and hunts for food, builds a shelter, etc., we’re almost getting “Misery” vibes—but every time we think we know where “Send Help” is headed, tables are flipped and the power dynamic changes, and boy do things get gloriously messy.
Whereas Linda was a mousy wallflower in the civilized world, she blossoms on the island to the point where she looks like she’s starring in an ad for an Abercrombie & Kent luxury vacation. Bradley remains a self-centered narcissist—but he quickly comes to realize he’s dead without Linda’s help. (There’s a terrific montage showcasing O’Brien’s comedic skills, as we see the changes in Bradley’s expression with each passing hour when Linda isn’t around.) Director Raimi has long been a master of practical effects mixed with VFX in films such as “The Evil Dead,” the 2000s “Spider-Man” films and “Drag Me to Hell” and that holds true here, though the CGI is occasionally so obvious it feels intentional, e.g., a certain wild omnivorous mammal who is about as realistic as the Cocaine Bear. The performances by McAdams and O’Brien become more layered and intriguing as we learn their back stories and see how they play off one another, keeping us on edge throughout as we wonder who to root for—maybe both of them, maybe neither? “Send Help” also delivers the best jump-scare moment I’ve experienced in a long time; actual chills raced through me.
The slogan for Linda’s favorite show, “Survivor,” is “Outwit. Outlast. Outplay.” With “Send Help,” we begin to wonder if the motto is going to turn out to be “Outwit. Out-Slash. Out-Slay.”
