Send Help

It does the soul good to see an arch, remorseless face-prodder like director Sam Raimi back at the helm of a film, like Send Help, that isn't premised on an enormous, swaying franchise. Rachel McAdams (who, in fairness to the thundering Disney machine crossed paths with Raimi as an inherited love interest on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) stars as Linda Liddle, a cubicle-bound company backbone who is continuously passed over for corner office advancement because she doesn't wash her hair often enough or instinctively swipe away the tuna mayonnaise that clings to her cheek. Shipwrecked on a Thai island with her nepotism hire superior, played by Dylan O'Brien, who was keen to fill out his boardroom with the frat buddies that have just provided entertainment as uncontrolled decompression events, Linda is in her element. Finally, she is able to leverage all the wilderness, self-sufficiency trivia she's soaked up while striving to be a contestant on the never-ending American reality series Survivor. Her ability to tune out the squelching goops now constantly about her person has become an obvious benefit. Conceptually, Send Help has trace structure inherited from morality plays, with the indefatigable Linda now in an unexpected position to make literal claims on her indispensability to a cowed boss but Damian Shannon and Mark Swift's screenplay does quickly press into entertainingly amoral waters. As Linda becomes increasingly comfortable exercising control over O'Brien's quivering injured ingrate, revealing a genuine desire to keep him trapped in her web, Send Help threatens to coarsen but, in truth, Linda has fought so hard (and so bloodily) to amuse us that it's difficult to really hold a couple of murders against her.