It’s still hard to fathom Sam Raimi’s collegiate start in
the film world with his now celebrated and legendary horror franchise The
Evil Dead would blossom into a successful career as a major Hollywood
director. Though some projects like the
first Spider Man film seemed to shed some of his skin, the second film
went right back to the roots that generated his horror misadventures with the
character of Ash.
Though Raimi made a
concerted effort following the third and much ballyhooed Spider Man film
to get back into horror with the Alison Lohman starring Drag Me to Hell,
the Michigan based horror filmmaker inevitably fell right back into the
Disney/Marvel machine with films like Oz the Great and Powerful and the
quasi-Evil Dead iteration Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
and rumor has it he’s planning a fourth Spider Man though that could be
malarkey. For now however, Raimi is back
in the horror chair with the survival thriller Send Help, a film that
conceptually starts out as Cast Away, Lord of the Flies and
eventually more directly Triangle of Sadness that nevertheless is a
welcome return to form featuring a stunningly feral turn from leading actress
Rachel McAdams in her most deliberately unglamorous role yet.
Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a diligent but frumpy and
socially awkward office worker bee in the corporate finance world who was
originally promised by her former boss a sizable promotion until his son and
newly appointed CEO Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) thinks otherwise giving the
promotion to someone with more sex appeal.
Undeterred, Linda barges into an office meeting in protest. Surprised by her bravery but still keen on
belittling and humiliating her out of disgust, he asks her to accompany him on
a business trip to Bangkok.
Much like Cast
Away however, the aircraft hits a storm and is downed in the middle of the
ocean, washing her and her injured boss Bradley ashore on an island in the Gulf
of Thailand with no other apparent survivors from the flight. Secretly Linda, a student and aficionado of
the Survivor television program, sets up shelter and goes on a hunt for
food meanwhile Bradley is incapacitated but still treats her like a
subordinate. Over time, the power
dynamics shift with Linda becoming the dominant and stronger sex on the island
and the tension intensifies in a Hard Candy kind of way.
Another welcome addition
fans of Alien will notice is the older 20th Century Fox
styled logo opening the film, indicating we’re in old school horror land. Though featuring some supporting characters
including a cameo by Emma Raimi, the film basically boils down to the two leads
Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien.
Through and through, this is McAdams show in a startlingly brave and at
times repellent performance including a Raimi gag of her throwing up on her
costar. Dylan O’Brien makes the
corporate bigwig a schmuck though one of the film’s surprising virtues is how
it makes us jump alliances between him and her, back and forth so we’re never
really sure who to trust.
More
than anything, its refreshing to see the mind behind the still rough and
scrappy but timelessly brilliant The Evil Dead going back to the genre
that landed him on the scene in the first place. Still wild to think years ago The Book of
the Dead premiered at the Redford Theater as an independent project and now
Raimi is releasing big Hollywood films across IMAX laser screens while still
harkening back to the driving force that turned Raimi and his actor Bruce
Campbell into pop-cultural horror icons.
No Raimi doesn’t invent the horror wheel with Send Help but its
most enjoyable film of his since, well, Drag Me to Hell.
--Andrew Kotwicki