With Send Help, screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift have taken the basic setup of Lina Wertmuller's Swept Away (and its awful Madonna-starring, Guy Ritchie directed remake) and given it a gender swap. Here it's a lowly female employee who finds herself stranded on a desert island with her male boss. Much of Send Help explores the same class and sexual tensions as Wertmuller's film, but with Sam Raimi in the director's chair we know things are going to get a little crazy at some point. And, boy, do they!
Rachel McAdams is an actress with a penchant for collaborating with aging male American auteurs (her CV includes films by Woody Allen, Brian de Palma, Terrence Malick and Wes Craven). For Raimi she plays Linda, an unappreciated corporate strategist at a company that views her as a "workhorse." Her colleagues like to offload their dirty work on Linda and then take the credit for her hard work. Things go from bad to worse when the firm's owner (seen in a portrait as posed by Raimi regular Bruce Campbell) dies and his ex-frat boy son Bradley (Dylan O'Brien) takes over. Bradley takes an instant dislike to the frumpy Linda, awarding her expected promotion to his old college buddy. When Linda makes her feelings known, Bradley placates her by inviting her on a trip to Thailand for an important merger.
Over the Pacific, the plane hits turbulence and crashes into the ocean. Linda wakes up on the beach of a small island and finds the prone body of Bradley nearby, rendered immobile by a leg injury. Neither Linda nor Bradley are too happy to be stuck together, but having dreamed of competing on TV's Survivor, Linda has spent years preparing for exactly this scenario. She proves surprisingly adept at hunting boar, building fires and shelter, and collecting drinkable rain water. Conversely, Bradley is useless. With a gammy leg and no survival skills, Bradley is forced to rely on Linda if he wants to stay alive.
Along with Swept Away, there is an element of Misery to Raimi's film. The key difference is that in this scenario we're largely rooting for the Kathy Bates surrogate in McAdams' Linda. Bradley is such a douchebag that we relish the put-upon Linda lording it over him. Linda enjoys her newfound dominance so much that she has no interest in returning to civilisation, where she'll once again be belittled by people like Bradley.
Despite their initial mutual disdain, a sexual tension begins to develop between Linda and Bradley. Savagery looks good on Linda, whose discarding of her pants-suit in favour of the traditional action heroine sleeveless vest uniform is this movie's equivalent of all those mousy women in rom-coms who suddenly transform into bombshells by simply removing a pair of black-rimmed glasses. As Bradley softens up and opens up about his mommy and daddy issues, Linda begins to find the cad attractive.
If none of this sounds like a Sam Raimi movie, it's because I can't really reveal what makes this a Sam Raimi movie without spoiling the fun of its rollercoaster of narrative turns and one-upmanship. If you've seen the poster you already know that at some point McAdams will end up covered in blood, resembling Bruce Campbell in Raimi's signature Evil Dead series. I'm not going to tell you where, who or what that blood comes from, but if you're an old time Raimi fan you'll appreciate how he integrates his uniquely gonzo style into the movie when the plot calls for things to get wild. His love of The Three Stooges comes to the fore in the movie's climax, which features comedic violence that will have you simultaneously laughing and wincing.
While there are lashings of Raimi's customary style when needed, for the most part he allows his two leads to take centre stage. Much like Linda, McAdams is an actress who deserves a bigger career. Mean Girls should have made McAdams an A-lister, but she had the misfortune of arriving just at a time when Hollywood stopped making the sort of movies that might exploit her comic talent. It's a delight to see her now gifted the role of the meanest girl since Regina George, and her range is fully deployed as we watch the untaming of the shrewish Linda. As he recently demonstrated with his dual roles in Twinless, O'Brien is an actor with far more to offer than we might have previously thought. He's excellent here as the manipulative Bradley, obnoxious and disarmingly charming in equal measure.
Send Help makes much of a simple premise. It may be a Hollywood production but there's a b-movie energy to its clever use of a limited cast and confined location. A script filled with comedy and tension, two committed performers at the top of their game and a director who knows how to keep things moving all combine for a fun night at the movies.
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Starring: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O'Brien, Edyll Ismail, Dennis Haysbert, Zavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Thaneth Warakulnukroh
