Send Help Review: Rachel McAdams Brings a Gory Good Time

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There's a Selina Kyle quality to Send Help's character, Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams). Like Kyle, specifically in 1992's Batman Returns, she is the lonely, nerdy assistant to a domineering, misogynistic boss who gets a second chance on redefining herself through extreme circumstances. (No doubt it's part of the reason social media has been posting about why director Sam Raimi should helm a Batman movie.)

But Linda Liddle is no Catwoman. Instead, she dominates a gory, twisted, unpredictable tale that shows the extremes of "going native" while wrapped up in a story about power dynamics, sexism, and how Survivor might be the favorite television show for some of the scariest people alive.

Linda Liddle works for a company whose new boss, nepo baby Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien) is hellbent on getting rid of her. To Bradley, Linda is a "disgusting" person who visually repulses him. In the hopes of getting her to quit he offers her a seat on a company business trip where he and his colleagues humiliate her. But things take an unexpected turn when their plane crashes on an island and Bradley is injured. Linda, a Survivor nut, feels right at home on the island and uses the opportunity to prove to Bradley he's underestimated her. What follows is a battle of wills, with every decision the two end up making being key to getting off the island.

Send Help is a close cousin to Raimi's 2009 feature Drag Me to Hell, a divisive story about a similarly cruel person cursed with an unlikable woman following them around. Though, in this case, it's ridiculous to hear Bradley discuss how disgusting Linda is. (Even with all the greasy hair and bad makeup it's impossible to make Rachel McAdams unattractive.) Screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift know Bradley is a misogynistic scumbag, though, and part of his whole bent in the movie is that he sees women specifically through a certain light: an attractive prospect for an assistant willing to go "above and beyond," a skinny supermodel fiancee who dresses in couture to come visit him.

When he and his male colleagues bring Linda onto the plane the fear isn't one of abuse, but domination through bullying. The group brings out her Survivor audition tape – keenly mimicking what actual people submit – to emphasize what a loser she is to them. If you're anyone who's been in a toxic corporate setting, these moments of power imbalance and cruelty might feel particularly acute. What Shannon and Swift do so skillfully with their script though is continue to play with those imbalances even after Linda and Bradley hit, literally, the island.

The humor derives from the idea that two office drones would immediately die in a deserted island situation. Bradley exasperatedly says, "You're gonna hunt a boar? Linda from Accounting?" But as Linda points out, Bradley hasn't actually done any work in his life--calling his soft hands "straight from the factory"--while the opening credits show Linda as a voracious reader of different books, including survivalist texts. But, really, the freedom of the island allows Linda to find herself. Sure, she might realize she enjoys hunting, but the way McAdams commands the frame is always in awe of how magnificent nature is. It's bigger than her and lives by rules that she understands.

Linda is certainly a sad character, but she's alone by choice. She spends her nights making tuna fish sandwiches and watching Survivor with her pet bird, Sweetie. Linda later recounts to Bradley a past life of trauma and violence (implied both physical and sexual) with her husband who died in a car accident. McAdams gives an award worthy performance! (Yes, I know we're still talking 2025 Oscars, but indulge me.)

McAdams never makes Linda vulnerable, just pathetic in her opening introductions in the way she holds her anger in, like a bubbling pot of water, while simultaneously showing a desperation for being liked. This later changes to awe at the landscape around her, with only the slightest tinge of fear. As she tells Bradley, "Never mistake my kindness for weakness," the actress punctuating her words with a tinge of aggression that's frightening in how straightforward it is.

Yet McAdams is also a great comedienne, able to deftly handle the humor in some of the more outrageous moments, like the third act fight scene opposite O'Brien. O'Brien, to his credit, holds his own opposite McAdams, though it's clearly her movie. He has the perfect amount of smarm, couching so much of Bradley's criticisms under a veneer of support and guidance. His hostility comes out more once they're on the island as he falsely believes he's still in charge. He acts like a child, declaring he doesn't need Linda, only to become a blubbering mess within 24 hours.

Both characters are weaponizing something, and the scripts twists and turns come from those subtle changes within themselves. Linda, while having trauma, certainly uses that as a means of controlling Bradley's rage and anger. Bradley, though, goes harder and uses a perceived fondness (and potential attraction) to Linda to catch her off guard. Linda does terrible things, but the story makes it far worse to see Bradley outright lie about love and interest to get what he wants. It's also possible that the movie is poking fun at the numerous romances that seemingly pop out of high-risk situations (Speed, anyone). There are moments of tenderness between Bradley and Linda where the movie could have, wrongly, taken them down a romantic path, but it never lets you forget who these two people are.

Raimi's penchant for outsized, outrageous moments are present and accounted for. There's a lot of vomit in this one! The twist in the third act does come off as a little surrealist and dreamlike in how ridiculous it is and doesn't play as organic, but more so that they needed some way to balance the scales between Bradley and Linda. The ending also comes very quickly, so much so that it feels like a studio note to wrap things up more than anything else. These moments never undo the movie but keep it from being utterly perfect.

There's something prescient to today's times in Linda's mantra that "No help is coming. So you better start saving yourself." Send Help is a movie that does advocate for self-acceptance in the most extreme, heinous way possible. Hilariously gory, spooky and suspenseful, this is a soon-to-be Halloween classic that continues to make us ask, "Why the hell is Rachel McAdams not a huge star?"

Grade: B+

Send Help is in theaters Friday.

Are you a Sam Raimi fan? Let me know whether you're excited to see this or not in the comments below.