So I saw the new Rachel McAdams star vehicle Send Help, directed by no less than Mr. Evil Dead himself, Sam Raimi. It’s way fun. As it’s just released and in cinemas, I’ll avoid spoilers as much as possible. As you can guess from the poster below, this isn’t a film reveling in the quiet moments of domestic despair, ala the much-acclaimed Norwegian film Sentimental Value (2025). It’s more like in-your-face Action/Satire.
But here’s a connection that’s worth mentioning: It compares nicely to another Sam Raimi gem, Drag Me to Hell (2009), though it is less horror/more comedy: Both films feature a put-upon young woman in an office environment. In both stories the young woman is urged to go “above and beyond” the job’s requirements in order to be eligible for a promotion. And in both stories said young woman does not get the promotion she most certainly deserves. But all that is a distraction of sorts—or more accurately, motivation for the action. It’s not really about the job, or whether or not she gets the promotion. The stakes are higher than that. The drama is Life or Death.
Most of the action takes place on a small island in the Gulf of Thailand. Since I traveled to Thailand last spring it all looked familiar. It makes for a great movie location, with cliffs and beaches and jungle as backdrop to the survivalist plotline.
Rachel McAdams plays Linda Liddle, superficially the office goofball but actually the savviest employee for business-sense and numbers-crunching. That doesn’t impress the company’s nepo-baby topdog, Bradley, played well by the actor Dylan O’Brien. He’s a callous creep who has led a pampered life and doesn’t know a thing about survival in the outdoors, while Linda is a survivalist who has auditioned for the TV series Survivor, but who also seems more suited for the better reality series Alone, because Linda would excel at the survival tasks but likely fail at the social-maneuvering expected of the Survivor particpants.
Although McAdams is known for many roles I have to give a shout-out to one of my favorite comedies of the last decade, Game Night (2018). Jesse Plemons as their cop-neighbor who pines for his ex-wife is pure genius, and Rachel McAdams has great chemistry with Jason Bateman.
Send Help isn’t as good as Game Night . . . I think. I can’t actually say for sure because I missed the ending! Our theater was evacuated due to fire alarms. I’ll have to finish it later, but it was in the final minutes. Someone’s eye was getting popped out.