Send Help
Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams, "The Notebook," "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret") is that middle-aged office oddball who people avoid socially but appreciate professionally, her work in strategy and development for a financial investment firm so strong, she's been promised a promotion to vice president by the firm's founder. But when his smug son Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien, "The Maze Runner," "Twinless") takes the reins, he gives the position to his golfing buddy Donovan (Xavier Samuel, "Elvis," "Blonde"), the slick marketing guy we've just witnessed taking credit for Linda's work. Bradley is surprised when the meek and mousy Linda marches into his office demanding answers, so invites her along on a business trip to Thailand on their private jet as appeasement, but when the plane goes down in a storm, he'll find he and Linda are the only survivors in "Send Help."
Laura's Review: C+
Director Sam Raimi ("The Evil Dead," "Spider-Man 3") returns to his horror roots with a film that is a spiritual kin to 2009's "Drag Me to Hell." But there is a significant difference - Raimi wrote that one, whereas "Baywatch's" Damian Shannon & Mark Swift penned this and while it sports Raimi's style, it also becomes so cartoonish in its third act, it ends up throwing out the baby with the bath water.
If the gypsy who casts a spell on Alison Lohman in "Hell" arrived with a glob of phlegm at the corner of her mouth, this film's Linda Liddle turns off Bradley with tuna salad dribbled on her chin, director of photography Bill Pope ("Spider-Man 2," 2025's "How to Train Your Dragon") zooming in to accentuate the gross-out factor. Bradley even clandestinely scoops it off, the better to demand senior employee Franklin (Dennis Haysbert, TV's '24') smell it as he tries to vouch for Liddle's importance to the firm.
Linda, who has had her ability to solve a problem with the pitch they're about to make dangled as a potential path to that promotion, immediately sets to work on board the plane, but when she takes off her headphones to announce she's done just that, she realizes that Bradley, Donovan and the other guys are all up front laughing hysterically at the audition tape she'd submitted to the reality show 'Survivor.' No sooner has she shut down her laptop without saving her work, than the plane begins to break apart with effects as cheesy as McAdams' 2005 'thriller' "Red Eye." Trying not to be sucked out of the plane, Donovan almost strangles her. As the plane begins to sink into the ocean, Linda manages to get out and when she comes to, she has washed up on the sandy beach of a remote tropical island.
Exploring, she'll find Bradley, injured and unconscious and immediately set to building him a shade hut, bandaging his wounds, setting up a system for fresh water and catching fish. When he awakens, he'll be given water and fed, but the first thing he does is criticize her priorities, demanding to know just why she hasn't done something about getting them rescued. He also reminds her that he's the boss. Linda promptly walks off and when she returns quite some time later, he's in desperate shape, lesson apparently learned. Linda's survival skills continue to impress and Bradley even begins to learn some things from her, but Linda also has a big secret and when the two get drunk on her 'toilet wine,' turns out Bradley has one as well.
Linda's may be plausible, but Bradley's makes so little sense it pulls us right out of the film, which never really recovers, the arrival of Bradley's fiancée Zuri (Edyll Ismail) searching for him only exacerbating things. The film has been mildly amusing to that point, Linda becoming more attractive with her island diet, less clothing and loosened hair, but it also leans heavily on gross-out humor and jump scares. While McAdams return to the big screen is welcome and she throws herself into the role with gusto, one hopes to see her in something more deserving of her talent than this wannabe feminist revenge fantasy. "Send Help" posits that lack of nurture creates monsters, not nature, and it could have used a bit more nurturing itself.
20th Century Studios releases "Send Help" in theaters on 1/30/26.
