Underestimate her; that’ll be fun.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a bit of an odd duck among her co-workers. In spite of that, her insights have been invaluable to the company, earning her the promise of a significant upcoming promotion. When her boss suddenly passes away, his son Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) takes over the company on the eve of a business opportunity. Linda finds herself pigeonholed, others taking credit for her work, and her expected promotion given away. Bradley reluctantly accepts advice to take Linda along on a critical business trip but doubts her capabilities, looking forward to getting rid of her at his earliest opportunity. Unfortunately, a thunderstorm downs their private jet somewhere in the South Seas, and Bradley awakens injured on a deserted island… utterly dependent upon the very employee he chose to look down upon.

It’s been 17 years since Sam Raimi directed his last R-rated horror movie, specifically Drag Me to Hell. Full of Raimi’s signature images, too-extreme close-ups, and vertigo-inducing camera moves, I said “The evil is back. The Oldsmobile is back. Horror director Sam Raimi is back.” But did it actually go anywhere? Evil is as evil does, and more often than not in a Raimi flick, it’s a mask of privilege getting some good ol’ B-movie over-punishment (read: you foreclosed on someone’s home, so clearly you should be eviscerated by lions). There’s also often a failure to acknowledge someone’s power in the dynamic, like cutting line in front of a poor old woman only to learn she can legitimately curse you. In either case, someone has failed to realize the force of nature they’re trifling with, and isn’t it amusing watching them fully realize just how badly they’ve screwed themselves into oblivion?

One of the best things about Send Help is that nothing supernatural is involved. A convenient storm or a lucky discovery, sure, but there’s no netherworld demons or summoned Deadites lurking about; it’s just two people doing their best to survive (the island and one another). Stephen King movies like Misery, Stand By Me, and The Shawshank Redemption are plenty creepy and even horrific, but there’s no ghosts or possessed cars or even haunted hotels. Linda did the research and the work while Bradley enjoyed empowerment and privilege, but any possibility of Bradley viewing himself as anything less than everyone’s superior is an exercise in futility, like watching a worm twisting on a fishhook. Call it a female power fantasy, deserved comeuppance, or just desserts; in their most desperate hour, some menfolk just can’t accept a capable woman… even if it costs them everything.

Even without Raimi’s usual ghosts and ghoulies, he finds plenty of opportunities for horror. McAdams and O’Brien appeared game for anything the director wanted to throw at them (or more to the point, onto them), including buckets of fake blood and significant viscera, never mind the most entertaining deplaning scene this side of Final Destination. Films like Cast Away, more recently Plane, and every episode of “Gilligan’s Island” have strip-mined similar concepts for plot points, so anyone paying attention isn’t going to be entirely surprised by any plot twists. There’s additionally one bit of denouement that’s fast becoming a too-common trope in these kinds of films, and it rang equally hollow here (if you’ve seen Companion, you probably already know).

It’s fun to imagine that, after Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, McAdams and Raimi decided they couldn’t wait to work together again, and this is the insanity they came up with. It’s promising that original horror-thrillers like this continue to fill the niche fans crave, but let’s make sure we’re still showing up at the cinema to support them, m’kay?

Send Help is rated R for strong/bloody violence, language, and incurable affluenza.

Three skull recommendation out of four