Director: Sam Raimi
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Dennis Haysbert
Rating: (R16)
★★★★
REVIEWED BY AMASIO JUTEL
Send Help is Sam Raimi’s unpretentious return to form after a brief foray into superhero storytelling.
Slotting neatly into his canon of mean-spirited movies that torture otherwise sympathetic characters — characters whose actions make you feel complicated about them — Send Help is eager for blood and unafraid to show you all things pulpy and gross.
This workplace gender war turned survival thriller strands strategy and planning extraordinaire Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) on a remote island off the coast of Thailand with her recently appointed chief executive, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) — the obnoxious misogynist who has promised Linda’s VP promotion to one of his golfing buddies. A superfan of Survivor, Linda thrives in her newly elemental lifestyle, uprooting the workplace power dynamic and instigating a conflict that is both good-natured and vindictive.
Playing ‘‘lame’’, her tuna-fish sandwiches and poor office banter are transformed by her island glow-up, further enriched by coconut moisturiser and delicate platters of sushi. Despite the glaring shots of wilderness books in her apartment, the character is completely believable — not surface-level — laced with a vindictive edge that halts viewers from rooting for her unconditionally.
Her counterpart is equally wonderful, delivering a cartoonishly villainous performance (that wouldn’t have been out of place in one of Raimi’s Spider-Man movies) as the shallow jerk Raimi needs viewers to root against, complete with goblin-like laughter. Bradley’s expensive Rolex — which flashes conspicuously on his wrist — might finally have some use as the specialised deep-sea diving instrument the company originally designed it for. It’s a hand accessory only outdone in the film by his fiancee’s gigantic diamond ring, which is so exquisitely stylised that lens flares become signifiers for the jewel.
Raimi’s touch is splattered across every frame of Send Help — extreme close-ups, feverish Dutch angles, castration and eye trauma — the film relentlessly one-ups itself. To viewers doubting the movie’s fake-out endings and absurd convolutions, if Raimi promises another dessert, you’d best believe he’ll deliver it.
