Raimi Watch: Send Help (2026)

Watched:  02/02/2026

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  First

Director:  Sam Raimi

So, two things before we get started.

1.  Back in college, my movie buddy was CB.  We went to film school together back in the day and saw lots and lots of movies together.  Turns out, CB now lives very close to me, and for the first time in decades we were taking in a genre movie like it was the mid-90's all over again.  (I saw Dead Alive with CB, for example).  Shout out to CB!

2.  I have Rachel McAdams face blindness.  It's a serious condition.  Jamie thinks it's a funny game to ask me occasionally who that person is on TV or in an ad or whatever, and I never know who she is.  I have no idea why.  She's a perfectly lovely woman, but if I was the witness when she committed a crime, she'd get off scot free.  Sure, I'll recognize her here, but when she's in her next movie trailer, Jamie will ask me again who that actress is, and I will have no idea.

This is also the third movie I've seen inside of a month that was about getting marooned on an island.  January 4th, we watched a Hallmark movie, Lost in Paradise and last week we watched A Game of Death.  Love an unintentional theme.  

If you've seen the trailer, you know what this movie is about.

McAdams plays a kind of nerdy office wunderkind, Linda Liddle, who was supposed to get a promotion to V.P. when the CEO dies and his son, Bradley (Dylan O'Brien), takes over.  

O'Brien's character is a terrible person, of course, and is disgusted by Linda for existing.  Meanwhile others are taking credit for her work and now slated to get her job.

LInda has to get on a plane with Bradley and his dude-bro buddies to go to Hong Kong, but the plane goes down.  She and Bradley wash up on an island in the Thai archipelago which means there's way too many places to effectively search and it's going to be a problem.

Turns out Linda is a huge fan of Survivor and has applied her analytics and strategy skills to looking into how one survives on an island.  She's basically been training for this for years.  Bradley, initially injured, still thinks Linda works for him.  

McAdams' character is a dork in a very hyperspecific ay that she just nails.  She's awkward, yes, but this is not someone snorting and pushing up glasses.  Her jokes are awkward, she can't read the room, she's overly enthusiastic in a way that never feels like a cartoon.  She enters the movie thinking she's due for recognition that Bradley takes away - then dangles in front of her.  

SPOILERS

I'm not sure the movie works as well as it could.  It's entertaining, but seems like it just doesn't want to go there when maybe taking some grittier/nastier risks would have given the movie teeth it's lacking.

You may have heard its gory, but not really.  I didn't know if we were going to get into some cannibalism or some such, but it's just standard blood you're going to see in any movie that's a little honest about spearing animals, with maybe a bit of extra splash because this is Sam Raimi.  But nothing in the movie came close to what I was expecting based on a few online comments (y'all are wimps).

I guess I was a bit surprised O'Brien's piece-of-shit executive wasn't more ruthless on the island - never really trying to claim the role of alpha.  When he finally does "drug" Linda, I assumed he was going to do some fairly nasty shit, not try to sail away on a lousy raft. My guess is that the gender dynamics and possibilities for some upsetting violence in this context made that a no go, but (a) that feels more buyable than pushing off into dark seas in an area with unpredictable weather and (b) not at least alluding to that possibility feels like the stakes/ reactions never quite match up.  Linda then briefly paralyzing Bradley and making him think she's castrating him... would have made more sense.

The movie wants for Linda to harbor a secret lust for Bradley, which is why she's supposed to be soft on him.   The movie as presented just doesn't really do much to establish *why* she'd have eyes for him other than he's generally good looking.  But we also know she spent a decade with an abuser.  Which is a curious thing to not tease out a bit more if you want for me to understand your movie.

But there's also the told-entirely-through-male-gaze shots of who McAdams' character blossoms into on the island - which is a very jazzercised, sun-kissed Linda.  And whether Bradley has any thoughts on this is never explored.  Especially if he thinks there's a chance they'll be there for a long, long time.

Look, I kind of think there's a script of this movie that's maybe a lot kinkier, but no one wanted to make "Survivor Swept Away".  Raimi wanted to make a comedy thriller and he was interested in the scenes of punctuated shock and violence, and something got lost in the connections - be it certain camera shots or whatever.  But it also feels intentional - like Raimi wants to keep the audience guessing and wants to do it with subtraction versus addition.  And even then...  for a movie I'd never seen, it felt like I could see what was coming ten or more minutes in advance at every turn.

It is *possible* other viewers weren't watching the movie and feeling all of this felt a little predictable (it did not help that Lost in Paradise, the Hallmark movie, also took place on an island that if they'd walked around the island, they'd have found out there were civilized amenities).  But the clues dropped along the way as to what was coming were kind of outlined in neon yellow. 

Man, I'm making it sound like I hated the movie.  I didn't.  It was fine.  It's darkly funny in a way I found terribly satisfying.  The performers are terrific and entertaining.  It's well-shot.  I wasn't bored for a second.  But something about it just didn't gel - and I think y'all are just experiencing me try to figure out why I felt like the movie wasn't working as well as it could have.  

CB made a comment as we were leaving about "who wrote this?" and the answer is a writing pair of dudes, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, and I think her suggestion was - maybe the POV of the movie was too male-centric when it had a female lead.  I'm inclined to think there's something there in CB's question.

For me, I mean, we all grew up reading Lord of the Flies.  I kind of assume that landing in a survival situation like this is going to go one of two ways - either everyone pitches in and it goes fine, or things go very south very fast.  And this movie wants to keep it a boiling tension in a way that felt... dishonest?  Like it was bubbling more for the sake of keeping the movie on a certain pace rather than just having a mortifying laugh at man's inhumanity to man.  Which probably wouldn't sell tickets.  

Also, the funnier joke is the Survivor nut having zero idea how to survive in the wilderness.  But that would be a different movie, I suppose.