When Sam Raimi isn’t wrangling Marvel’s heroes to varying degrees of success, he’s indulging his twisted love of gory, comedic, and horror films. Send Help, Raimi’s latest film since coming off Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, is a combination of all three. In that order.
Send Help isn’t the triumphant return of ‘classic’ Sam Raimi that many might have wished for. It’s got all the hallmarks, but lacks a certain something (maybe it’s vim) that holds this back from being one of his best. What’s left over is still a fun-to-its-core romp that’s elevated by cracking chemistry and a Danny Elfman score we admit flew by almost unnoticed. Bummer.
What’s This?
As much as Send Help is billed as a duo that involves an employee and her douchebag boss, it’s still Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) who drives this forward with her clever and hard-working yet too-awkward demeanour at work, which ultimately threatens her promotion at work when her boss dies, only to be replaced by his son.
Bradley Preston, the aforementioned douchebag (played by the surprisingly well-cast Dylan O’Brien), struts about the building like he owns the place — because he does — like Twitter’s definition of a man. It’s Bradley’s fondness for his ‘boys club’ that pushes Linda out of a surefire promotion, until she’s offered the opportunity to prove Bradley wrong by hopping on a private jet with them to go… somewhere. Not that it matters, really.
The plane goes down, leaving Linda and Bradley stranded on a deserted island together. Like any good survival flick, it doesn’t take long for Send Help to get right down to it. While Bradley is badly injured, Linda thrives in this environment as she busts out her Survivor skills (of course, she’s a Survivor fan) to whip up a camp. Bradley’s left in an awkward position to be left at his employee’s mercy, especially one he was so rude to. Chaos ensues.
Whiplash
Send Help suffers from an identity crisis. It spends much of its 1h53m runtime hopping from one tone to the next at a breakneck pace. It dabbles in each well enough, proving to be funnier than most of Raimi’s films thanks to a (mostly) tight script by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift that ultimately suffers in the third act. Even so, it oftentimes failed to deliver on the utter Raimi-ness we longed for, despite the obvious provocation.
The film struggles to justify Raimi’s presence throughout, feeding the audience some (mostly) uninteresting camera work we struggled to get behind. There are brief flashes that felt more like what we expected from the legend, occasionally inviting the audience to gorge on a gory horror flick before returning to what came before. When the dam finally breaks, and Raimi is briefly unleashed, that’s when Send Help is at its best.
Even if Raimi hasn’t quite got the stomach for the total carnage he used to, what came before is still worth your time. Raimi can still pull the funny-but-campy humour out of anything, including the film’s two superb leads. Even so, we can’t help but wonder what another director might have been able to pull off given the same material.
The film plays it safe for the majority of its runtime, revelling in those more lighthearted moments and mostly succeeding. That’s a roundabout way of saying that Send Help still proved itself to be a good time after everything, even if Raimi-heads still await a proper return to form, with Bruce Campbell in there somewhere.
Cast Away
It’s a given that Rachel McAdams was going to give it her all, permitted to let loose, comedically speaking, in a way we’ve not seen since Mean Girls. Even if the character of Linda Liddle seemed a little difficult to root for at times, McAdams delivered, time and again. She’s obviously helped out by Dylan O’Brien, whose performance doesn’t waste any time in helping the audience build up a love/hate relationship with Bradley.
Send Help would not work without the right cast. There’s nothing to say that Rachel McAdams or Dylan O’Brien were crucial to the role, but we’re glad that this is who we got. The two have an electricity that enables them to play off each other, even if McAdams is clearly in control of the situation on set, with O’Brien taking notes.
Finally — it isn’t Stuff’s business to badmouth a Danny Elfman anything — but that’s why it hurts here to remark on Send Help’s oftentimes forgettable at best, and at worst, distracting score that feels about as consistent as the main man at the helm himself.
Send Help verdict
But hey, even if Send Help wasn’t the culmination of Raimi’s powers, we still had a fun time. A frustratingly fun time. It’s got the gory, goofy, horror-adjacent instincts that make Sam Raimi, who rarely gets time to stretch his legs. Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien hold it all together right throughout the tonal whiplash. While it never quite becomes the unhinged Raimi return fans have been craving, it’s still an entertaining survival romp perfect for a night-in that proves even a restrained Raimi can deliver a good time. Just not a great one.
Send Help begins its local theatrical release today, Friday, 30 January.
