Avoiding almost all suggestions of glamor, Rachel McAdams headlines director Sam Raimi's Send Help, a boldly entertaining mashup of horror, comedy, and survival adventure.
Raimi (The Evil Dead and three Spider-Man movies) begins by introducing McAdams' Linda to a rotten rich-kid boss (Dylan O'Brien). O’Brien’s Bradley has taken over the company where Linda works after the death of his father, the previous CEO. There goes the promotion Linda had been promised.
Despite rejecting her for a VP job, Bradley invites Linda to join his boys-only executive team on a private flight to Bangkok. She's supposed to crunch numbers for an impending merger while the men guzzle champagne and make fun of her.
To augment Linda' s torment, the men watch a tape one of them found online. It's Linda's audition for Survivor, a show she watches religiously. The video cracks them up, but not for long. The private jet comes apart in a vividly presented crash sequence, and, lo, boss and Linda are stranded on a desert island in the Gulf of Thailand. The others — so obnoxious we hardly care — don't survive the crash.
On the island, the script flips. The injured Bradley finds himself dependent on Linda, whose survival skills are real. Hungry for protein, she kills a wild boar (CGI), an encounter that leaves her splattered with the beast’s flesh and blood, not the last time the movie happily challenges those who might be squeamish.
It's clear that this is the moment Linda was made for. She's finally getting a chance to exact revenge on a world that scorned her for eating tuna fish sandwiches at her desk (too smelly) and making no attempt to elevate her fashion style: office frump. Why wouldn't Linda want payback for humiliations inflicted by a boss who finds her repulsive?
From the start, Raimi commits to a movie that takes a variety of surprising turns while bypassing sentiment. At times, Bradley and Linda seem to be coexisting but sinister twists await. Their relationship has a seesaw quality, friendly, then hostile.
The movie itself proves canny: Sure, it includes some devilish behavior and sometimes revels in its twisted ways. I found it hard not to laugh at a scene involving projectile vomiting. But Raimi smartly wraps the story in a glossy, mainstream package that can be inviting, even reassuring. It's almost as if Raimi doesn't want the movie to tumble into a niche ditch.
Some of the movie's reveals won't surprise seasoned viewers, but Raimi concludes with a sly crowd-pleasing coda that serves as a giddy exclamation point to all that preceded it. Makes sense, Raimi concocts an upbeat ending for a movie that might have been unbearable had it taken itself more seriously.
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