Written by: Siddhartha Krishnan | 5 Min Read
Sam Raimi’s latest, Send Help, ends with a piece of advice from its protagonist Linda. In the scene, she breaks the fourth wall, stares straight into the camera and says: “No help is coming, so you better start saving yourself.” In many ways, that line captures the soul of the film.
Send Help, beneath its survivor thriller surface, wrestles with power dynamics at the workplace, gender politics, and the gradual escalation of unresolved resentment. But this is still Raimi territory, so the tension is constantly punctured by his trademark cocktail of slapstick comedy and gleefully exaggerated violence. In short, it has all the ingredients of a classic Sam Raimi entertainer.
The question is: does it all come together, or collapse under the weight of its own madness?
Story:
Linda Liddle, played by Rachel McAdams, works in the strategy and planning division of her company. She is competent and hardworking; perhaps too sincere for the corporate machinery she serves. Having been promised a VP position by her former boss, Linda believes her years of loyalty are finally about to pay off. But the company is now run by Bradley Preston, the newly appointed CEO and son of her late mentor, played by Dylan O’Brien. Bradley instead hands the promotion to Donovan, a recent hire and close associate, bluntly telling Linda that she lacks the attractiveness and charisma required for the role.
Humiliated and emotionally cornered, Linda confronts Bradley. Oddly enough, he seems impressed by her defiance and invites her to accompany him, Donovan, and a few senior executives on a private jet to Thailand to finalise a merger. Linda sees it as one last chance to prove her worth. But in true Raimi fashion, the setup quickly curdles into something far nastier. The trip is nothing more than an elaborate exercise in humiliation designed to break her spirit.
Then comes the turn.
The plane flies straight into a violent storm, suffers catastrophic engine failure, and crashes into the sea in a sequence Raimi stages with chaotic energy, panic, and just the right touch of grim absurdity. By morning, everyone is dead except Linda and an injured Bradley, who wash ashore on a deserted island.
Now stranded in isolation, the two are forced into the ultimate team-building exercise: survival. But with resentment, humiliation, and mutual hatred festering beneath the surface, coexistence becomes as dangerous as the island itself. Raimi crafts a deliciously tense setup here, blending survival thriller, psychological warfare, and his trademark streak of darkly comic cruelty into one wildly entertaining premise.
Screenplay:
Like most Sam Raimi films, Send Help wastes very little time getting to the point. Raimi has always been a visionary genre filmmaker obsessed with survival, both physical and psychological. From Evil Dead to Drag Me to Hell, his characters are constantly pushed into chaotic situations where survival becomes messy, painful, and often absurdly funny. What makes Raimi unique, however, is the way he wraps these primal survival themes inside wildly inventive genre frameworks, blending the supernatural, splatter horror, slapstick physical comedy, and known visual tropes into pure cinematic entertainment.
You can find almost all of those Raimi trademarks in Send Help. Yet what is surprising here is the restraint. Raimi occasionally steps back from the chaos to indulge in something far quieter: character study. Some of the film’s best moments are not the violent outbursts or elaborate set pieces, but the simmering exchanges between Linda and Bradley, where resentment, insecurity, and power games quietly bubble beneath the surface. These scenes remain tense and darkly humorous, but they also reveal an unusual level of patience in Raimi’s storytelling.
Even though the film largely revolves around Linda and Bradley, the screenplay gradually introduces several narrative threads that need resolution by the final act. The way screenplay writers, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, tie these loose ends together is consistently engaging to watch. Themes of power, hierarchy, gender politics, resentment, and revenge are woven seamlessly into the survival narrative, often with surprising subtlety. This is not the relentlessly breakneck Raimi we are used to. Here, he allows certain moments to breathe, giving the film an unexpectedly reflective quality, within the madness.
That said, the screenplay does stumble when it tries too hard to connect every narrative thread. Realism has never really been Raimi’s strength, nor does it need to be, but some late-stage twists and revelations feel convenient, even by his standards. Certain discoveries toward the climax border on the outlandish and slightly dilute the grounded emotional tension the film works hard to establish. The ending, in particular, feels like it needed one more rewrite to fully land its emotional and thematic payoff.
Still, at a lean runtime of just 1 hour and 52 minutes, Send Help is rarely dull. Raimi keeps the film moving with his trademark energy, delivering bursts of gore, laugh-out-loud physical comedy, inventive jump scares, and the kind of restless pacing that reminds you why he remains one of the most distinctive genre filmmakers working today.
Performances:
At its core, Send Help is less about survival and more about the toxic power struggle between Linda and Bradley. Raimi refuses to make either character traditionally likable, forcing them into morally messy situations that test their humanity under pressure.
That challenge extends to the performances. Raimi constantly shifts between tension, violence, and exaggerated comedy, demanding actors balance emotional sincerity with heightened absurdity.
Thankfully, both leads fully commit.
Dylan O’Brien plays Bradley with controlled cruelty, while Rachel McAdams makes Linda feel volatile and emotionally explosive. Their opposing energies give the film much of its tension.
The film also keeps the audience morally unsettled. There are long stretches where neither character feels worth rooting for, and that ambiguity feels intentional.
McAdams is especially strong here. She understands Raimi’s heightened style without losing the emotional core, keeping Linda theatrical yet believable. The film largely rests on her performance, and she carries it confidently.
Conclusion:
Sam Raimi, the filmmaker behind the original Evil Dead trilogy and the first three Spider-Man films, has always been obsessed with survival. In retrospect, his move from horror to superhero cinema feels natural because even heroes trying to save the world must first save themselves. That idea lies at the heart of Send Help.
Beneath its gore, slapstick comedy, jump scares, and dark humor, the film is ultimately about power, resentment, and survival. While the screenplay occasionally relies on convenient twists and an ending that feels undercooked, Raimi’s direction and the committed performances, especially from Rachel McAdams, keep the film consistently engaging. More restrained than his usual work yet still unmistakably Raimi, Send Help is a messy, darkly entertaining survival thriller that reminds you why he remains one of the greatest genre filmmakers of all time.
Verdict:
IMDb rating: 6.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 92% approval rating
Metacritic: 75/100
My rating: 3/5
Box office:
Worldwide gross: $94 M
Production budget: $40 M
You can watch Send Help on JioHotstar in India.
Pic credits: 20th Century Studios/Raimi Productions
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About the author:
Siddhartha Krishnan is the author of ‘Two and a Half Rainbows – A Collection of Short Stories’. An enthusiastic blogger he shares his essays, travelogues, book and movie reviews on his blog (www.whatsonsidsmind.com).
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