Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) has been working in her cubicle as a strategist for the last eight years, promised by the recently deceased president of a nameless yet important company that she would be promoted to the executive office. Unfortunately for Linda, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) is promoted to CEO upon his father’s death, and his promised promotion is not honored, instead going to Donovan (Xavier Samuel), a less experienced analyst, but longtime friend of Bradley’s.  In compromise, Bradley offers to let Linda join the executive team on an important meeting with Bangkok, but as they are en route to the merger, their plane gets caught in a storm and crashes into the ocean.  Only Linda and Bradley make it to shore, and they must put their differences aside if they have any hope of surviving. 

Sam Raimi directs Send Help, a 113-minute horror comedy released wide courtesy of 20th Century Studios.  The film was written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift; horror writers who, after writing Seth Gordon’s Baywatch (2017), are seeking a return to form after an almost decade long hiatus at the keys.  While this is the pair’s first collaboration with Raimi, Send Help finds the director returning with the pool of talent that has helped define his career, namely: cinematographer Bill Pope, editor Bob Murawski, and composer Danny Elfman. 

The film is largely a two-hander, but Raimi flips this odd couple dynamic right on its head as each sequence is designed to bring Linda and Bradley one step closer than two steps back.  This ill-fated tango is incredibly entertaining to watch, but unlike all the best tango tunes, there is way too much down time, and it does not hit nearly as furiously as the concept demands.  By rights, Send Help is still a high concept; though, singular concept seems a more appropriate term to use in this case.  As such, there is no time to dawdle lest the concept begin to experience stress fractures from supporting the extended run time.  When looking at either of its main genre touchstones – horror and comedy – Send Help does not deliver nearly enough laughs or scares at a tempo that either audience demands.  With that being said, both McAdams and O’Brien prove to be incredibly competent at serving both genre masters when the time comes so that the set pieces and the setups are all quite enjoyable enough to keep audiences engaged. 

O’Brien has the slightly more difficult role here simply because he is offered less to do and has to be more reactionary.  He brings a smarmy charm to the role so that as his character gets hit with more and more setbacks, and is further infantized by a broken leg from the crash to really sell the fact that this guy that sits at the top of the corporate food chain has no real life experience or know how outside of the golf course, we can not help ourselves but to pile on him along with Linda.  Like a bit of a cat and mouse, peek-a-boo game, Raimi does play around with this archetype so that there are moments of genuine connection forged between the two stranded islanders, never so much so as to totally absolve his abhorrent behavior or disarm the toppling of the class structure which Send Help is seeking to achieve, but enough to keep us invested in these people as characters beyond just the immediate struggle of seeking rescue. 

When it comes to seeking that rescue, however, Linda is far less enthusiastic about rejoining modern society as she has used her outdoorsman training to build up all the creature comforts missing from home that one might want, right there on the island.  McAdams is charged with driving the story engine, a leading role which she exuberantly fulfills.  With a resume built more on comedy and drama, she revels in getting to slice and slash her way through Raimi’s more horror elements; to be clear, the horror in Send Help is mostly the presence of liberally sprayed blood and a few clever jump scares that are intended to get audiences to laugh at themselves and have a little fun with the film.  With such an active role in the film,  McAdams’ Linda is stretched thin across all of the themes which Raimi is seeking to explore, and while she rises to the challenge for the individual scenes, that lack of focus on the page really pulls down the entire enjoyment of the film as we can feel it grasping at something larger instead of just letting loose and having fun with the scenario and exhausting that of all its comic juices.   

Send Help simply exists.  Viewed as an “eat the rich” commentary, it does not have nearly enough contempt for the elite class, nor does it bring anything new into the rapidly becoming overdone theme du jour.  Despite indications that Linda is attracted to her boss, the film is hardly transgressive enough to be considered a sexual thriller, but nonetheless, Pope’s camera lands on two very district handprints in the sand next to Linda one dawn that are never again mentioned suggesting a probably-for-the-wiser B-plot left on the cutting room floor.  As mentioned, the horror heads in the audience will be in bored solidarity with the chuckle heads as Send Help does not satisfy either audience with a high enough hit rate to really keep them entertained beyond the cursory connection to the flashing images on screen.  Even at that basic level, Send Help has such a strange pace that it is hard to keep track of the narrative time which has elapsed.  The fade to black suggests a time jump of some sort, but if Linda and Bradley have been stranded for mere days or weeks is a slippery subject that ultimately does not matter. The problem is, when presented with so many meticulous micro elements, this overarching lack of clarity serves as just one more disappointment for those seeking to glimpse the larger picture.  To be fair, nothing is so egregiously poor that it makes Send Help unwatchable, but it is just competently made well enough to know that there is a better film in here somewhere and that makes for a frustrating experience. What arrives on screen is absolutely amoral, apolitical, and as a result, audiences are struck apathetic.