Review: Send Help

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

Beneath its slick production values, gory special effects (including, but not limited to: shattered teeth, gouged-out eyes, mangled limbs, and bitten-off fingers), and zany slapstick gags (many of the aforementioned injuries are played for dark comedy), Send Help is a movie about society in its purest form, exploring what happens when traditional hierarchies crumble and two people on very different levels of the corporate totem pole suddenly find themselves equal partners in the struggle to survive.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams, navigating the razor-thin line between “quirky” and “annoying”) is the quintessential office drone: overworked, underappreciated, ostracized by her peers, and shamelessly exploited by her superiors. Her new boss (Dylan O’Brien, lending a degree of emotional complexity to what could easily have been a thinly-sketched caricature), on the other hand, personifies the “douchebag executive” archetype: he inherited his position via nepotism; he promotes old frat buddies over more competent employees; he’s arrogant, condescending, misogynistic, classist, and just plain unpleasant in general. When this odd couple wind up stranded on a remote island en route to a major merger negotiation, they must set aside their petty personal squabbles and cooperate (albeit reluctantly) in order to conquer the hostile forces of nature. Conflict, of course, inevitably emerges as their fundamentally incompatible personalities, already volatile in isolation, become outright explosive such claustrophobic proximity: with the balance of power constantly shifting, both characters are driven to increasingly desperate measures in their efforts to seize control of the situation—to the extent that the consequences of being rescued and returning to “civilization,” where their sins will be laid bare for all to judge, are more terrifying than remaining in the relative “comfort” of the wilderness.

It’s a simple story, built on a foundation of familiar tropes and narrative conventions. Fortunately, Sam Raimi directs the film with enough manic enthusiasm and maximalist zeal to make the well-worn material feel fresh and innovative, conducting a rich visual symphony of crane shots, macro lens compositions, and immaculately choreographed jump scares. And, as always, he relishes the opportunity to torment his glamorous actors, covering McAdams and O’Brien in copious amounts of blood, salvia, vomit, mud, snot, and other miscellaneous viscous liquids. Send Help is, in short, cinematic spectacle of the highest caliber, a triumph of mid-budget craftsmanship, the epitome of style elevating substance. I’d expect no less from the genius that created The Evil Dead with nothing but a handful of pocket change, a few planks of wood, one legendary chin—and a dream.