Send Help Review: Corporate Karma Washes Ashore In Rachel McAdams, Dylan O'Brien, Edyll Ismail's Thriller

Title: Send Help

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Thaneth Warakulnukroh, Emma Raimi, Dennis Haysbert

Where: In theatres near you

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Sam Raimi’s Send Help begins as a workplace satire that veers into a survival thriller, only to refuse to choose just one lane. Two corporate opposites, stranded on an island after a plane crash, are forced into an uneasy alliance that quickly mutates into a battle of wills. The premise is deceptively simple, but Raimi is less interested in survival manuals than in exposing how power behaves once titles, offices, and HR policies are stripped away.

The film takes its time finding its rhythm, perhaps too much time. The early stretches linger on familiar corporate humiliations and predictable character beats. Yet once the island becomes the primary arena, Send Help reveals its true intentions. This is not a heroic tale of resilience but a messy, darkly comic dissection of entitlement, resentment, and the small brutalities people justify when they believe they deserve control. Raimi’s fondness for excess, both visual and emotional, ensures that the film rarely settles into comfort. It pokes, prods, and occasionally wallows, but it does so with mischievous intent.

Actors’ Performance

Rachel McAdams carries the film with a performance that gradually sheds its politeness like dead skin. Her Linda begins as an overly eager employee shaped by years of professional diminishment. What makes the turn compelling is that McAdams never plays it as a simple empowerment arc. There is humour, calculation, and something faintly unsettling beneath her smiles. The transformation feels earned, if not always flattering.

Dylan O’Brien has the trickier assignment. His Bradley is designed to repel, a portrait of inherited authority and casual cruelty. O’Brien avoids cartoonish villainy by allowing flickers of vulnerability and confusion to surface, especially when competence deserts him. The chemistry between the two is combustible, and much of the film’s tension comes from their verbal sparring rather than its physical dangers.

The film’s decision to function largely as a two-hander places unusual pressure on its leads, turning performance into the primary engine of momentum rather than plot.

Music and Aesthetics

Raimi’s visual language is unapologetically tactile. Close-ups linger too long, landscapes feel both lush and hostile, and moments of grotesque humour erupt without warning. The aesthetic flirts with camp but never fully surrenders to it. Digital effects are used with a knowingly heavy hand, sometimes to uneven effect, but often in service of the film’s exaggerated moral universe.

The score leans into unease, nudging scenes toward irony or dread as required. Sound and image work together to remind us that this island is not a paradise, but a pressure cooker.

FPJ Verdict

Send Help is uneven, indulgent, and occasionally frustrating. It is also bracingly watchable and oddly honest about the uglier instincts that surface when power shifts. Raimi may not achieve perfect balance, but he delivers a film that is willing to get its hands dirty. For viewers willing to embrace its rough edges, this is a survival tale that bites back.