Movie Review: Send Help (2026)

Send Help (2026) directed by Sam Raimi

Rachel McAdams is the put-upon Linda Liddle, a genius office worker with no social skills. She dresses a bit shabby and eats at her desk and hasn't made friends with anyone at work. But she's great at numbers and was promised a promotion by the now-deceased owner. The owner's son, Bradley (Dylan O'Brien), is taking over. Linda met him briefly at the office Christmas party months ago and she thought they hit it off. She is excited about getting promoted and maybe having a romantic connection with Bradley. Unfortunately, he's a bit smarmy. He gives the promotion to his pal who passes off Linda's work as his own. Bradley is engaged to a provocative woman (Edyll Ismail) who wouldn't give Linda the time of day. Linda musters her courage and confronts Bradley in his office about the promotion. He's sort of impressed and offers her to come on a business trip to India with some other executives so she can work on an important document. She shows up at the airport ready for work while the guys (all the executives are guys) are ready for fun. She sits in the back of the private plan working on the document while the others are carousing. One of the executives shows Bradley something he's found online--Linda's cheesy audition video for the TV series Survivor. They have a big laugh at her expense. Then the plane hits a storm and crashes, killing everyone but Linda and Bradley. They wash up on a small island in the middle of nowhere. Linda's survival skills come in very handy, especially considering Bradley has none. As she builds shelter and collects food, they have to work out their problems, if they can....

The story, while holding no surprises, still has a lot of tension and drama. Viewers immediately sympathize with Linda, a competent and thorough person who seems to have more compassion than social awareness. McAdams gives a very good performance, slipping into different emotional states with ease and communicating with facial expressions just as much as with dialogue. O'Brien makes a good foil as the spoiled but clever Bradley. He's almost entirely dependent on her and it takes him a while to realize the tables have turned. Raimi gives a lot of his typical stuff in this film, with more blood splatter and gore than you would think. More interesting are some really awful moral decisions that the characters make and deal with (or don't). The visual style is only occasionally over the top (another common Raimi element), suiting the survival story and the head-spaces of the characters. One or two bits look like they were designed specifically for the 3D version (I saw it in 2D), which I found a little distracting but a minor quibble.

The movie presents a fascinating character arc for Linda. She starts off as an unhappy office workers who lives with her parrot and doesn't have much else in her life (though her apartment is full of survival books and things, so she does have that hobby). Once she gets to use her skills on the island, she transforms as a person, to the point where a few times she avoids opportunities to be saved. She turns out to be a more complicated person, which is both good and bad for Bradley (and herself). She takes charge and he has to learn from her. But he also has to deal with her disinterest in getting rescued, something he is very unhappy about. Their conflict becomes very intense at points and the final resolution leaves Linda in a much different place. 

Recommended--if you can put up with the gore and some obvious plotting, some interesting issues are touched upon and the performances are good. This is about on par with Raimi's Drag Me to Hell.