TAGGED AS: Comedy, Horror, movies
Legendary Spider-Man (2002) and The Evil Dead director Sam Raimi is back on the big screen for the first time since he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and so far, critics are gushing over his new film. Send Help stars Rachel McAdams as Linda Liddle, a disgruntled consulting firm employee whose new boss Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) refuses her a promotion promised to her by his father in favor of hiring one of his buddies. When she’s nevertheless asked to join him on a trip to Thailand to help secure a company merger, their private plane crashes on a deserted island and he is badly injured, shifting the power dynamics and providing her with the opportunity to turn the tables.
Critics say that the darkly comic horror thriller benefits from some trademark Raimi flourishes, while McAdams dives into her role with enthusiasm and O’Brien makes for a fantastic, surprisingly nuanced villain. The film also has enough surprises to keep audiences guessing and finds a way to tackle its themes as it delivers top-notch thrills.
Here’s what critics are saying about Send Help:
Send Help is a small-scale moral fable about how quickly the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism can escalate into a full-blown horror… [This] is Raimi’s first film without any supernatural or superhuman elements since 1999’s For Love of the Game, but he does not let his relatively grounded premise restrict any of his signature camera tricks and visual tropes.
— Matt Singer, Screen Crush
It’s easy to imagine screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift cackling as they wrote the script and anticipating the audience members’ gasps with each new plot development. The narrative cleverness would only go so far, however, if it were not expertly brought to life. Raimi… attacks the material with a joyous ferocity that proves infectious. In the past, McAdams has proved equally fine at romantic comedy and serious drama, but this role stretches her in ways she’s never handled before… and O’Brien, whose character also displays many facets, matches her step for step.
— Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter
While it seemingly borrows from any number of sources — Misery, Office Killer, Cast Away, Yellowjackets, and Triangle of Sadness immediately leap to mind — Send Help becomes its own unique, mischievous, horrifying creation, thanks to director Sam Raimi and his singular gift for eliciting laughter that turns into screaming (and vice versa)… The film’s willingness to allow both of its protagonists to be villainous underscores a real critique of Survivor and, beyond that, capitalism in general: it’s not enough just to win, you also have to destroy the competition.
— Alonso Duralde, The Film Verdict
What’s so much fun about Send Help, beyond its twisted B-movie premise and refreshing disinterest in anything more highfalutin than handing Linda a chance to turn the tables, is how unpredictable it manages to be for most of their time on the island (except for that darn ending)… Essentially stripping all that’s “logical” from the psychological thriller genre, Raimi doesn’t seem especially concerned with plausible human behavior, preferring to keep audiences guessing as the characters’ motivations keep changing.
— Peter Debruge, Variety
Send Help is another “eat the rich” parable… yet it’s been told with enough wit and viscera to outpace many of its competitors… McAdams delivers broad comedic strokes with such forceful humanity that she’s able to play her own tricks on the audience’s sympathies… Send Help here benefits from Raimi’s trademark ruthlessness, because it allows Linda (and, in turn, McAdams) to test both her sanity and our loyalty to the underdog, while O’Brien offers us enough genuine depth to force us, at times, to question Bradley’s inhumanity.
— Clarisse Loughrey, Independent
Dropping a full-blown movie star into a role that demands humiliation, restraint, and a willingness to look foolish can backfire. But here, it’s a multiplying factor, and McAdams’ star power doesn’t flatten Send Help but electrifies it… The violence is sharp, and the comedy is clean, with Raimi observing his world’s details with a hunter’s precision.
— Alison Foreman, IndieWire
Send Help satisfies as a delicious two-hander that keeps you guessing, and features beautifully modulated performances by Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien. Linda’s arc, which is about as long and fulsome as you can get in a movie like this, will bend in surprising ways that implicate her behavior and keep the film from being a one-note takedown of the patriarchy.
— Mark Keizer, MovieWeb
Send Help marks a sharp and entertaining return to contained, character-driven horror for director Sam Raimi. the veteran filmmaker successfully blends survival-thriller tension with his signature flair for cruelty, dark humour and escalating psychological pressure, managing to deliver a film that is as uncomfortable as it is compulsively watchable.
— Linda Marric, HeyUGuys
Not only does it feel like a satisfying catharsis for those who’ve ever dealt with a boss from hell, this lean, mean, gleefully gnarly machine is wildly entertaining, causing us to scream and squirm long enough to go in for the kill… McAdams and O’Brien are terrific in berserker mode together, while also individually establishing their characters… Bloody, radical and totally savage, it’s full of edge of your seat thrills that are built to see again and again.
— Courtney Howard, Fresh Fiction
The hallmarks of a Sam Raimi splatterfest are all here, but the added cat-and-mouse game and how it can double for work and class-based dynamics are never lost on this relatively tight picture. The results are quite fun, as the dark comedy permeates, with a gleeful Raimi sitting back and letting both lead actors get their hands dirty.
— Aaron Neuwirth, We Live Entertainment
If the idea of a Sam Raimi survival thriller centered on Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien going bats–t bananas on a beach sounds like a good time at the movies, Send Help is for you… There’s nothing better than seeing a master at work and at play at the same time. Damian Shannon and Mark Swift’s script does great work starting Linda and Bradley at polar opposite points of audience sympathy, and seeing how adversity drives them towards the middle is supremely satisfying.
— Tom Jorgensen, IGN Movies
A delightfully nasty horror-comedy seemingly created so Rachel McAdams can let her freak flag fly. Send Help feels like a spiritual successor to Drag Me to Hell, in that the film has an intentionally wonky Looney Tunes tone and is loaded with scenes where characters scream while blood (and other fluids) splash into their faces and open mouths. I don’t think anyone is going to call this one of Raimi’s best movies, but gosh, it’s a lot of fun.
— Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm
Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien… prove an irresistible pairing as the power dynamics of Linda and Bradley’s relationship constantly shift, with Damian Shannon and Mark Swift’s script throwing curveballs almost every other scene… Send Help is, first and foremost, enormous fun.
— Ian Sandwell, Digital Spy
Send Help is not in the upper-tier of Raimi’s work, but it’s hard not to love seeing him back where he belongs: making graphic, hilarious movies with morally ambiguous characters. [It] isn’t necessarily revolutionary, but there is something cozy about Sam Raimi’s familiar blanket of blood and guts.
— Jay Ledbetter, AwardsWatch
It’s neither as funny as it needs to be nor as gross and gory as you’d hope Raimi’s first R-rated feature in more than two decades would prove, while still clearly salvaged by a talented filmmaker and two exceptional performers doing their best to elevate one-note, thinly sketched material… McAdams and O’Brien both manage to make this more entertaining and less infuriating than it sounds, selling both the broad rivalry dynamic and the more introspective moments in ways that likely don’t land on paper.
— Alistair Ryder, The Film Stage
It’s a time-honoured and perfectly enjoyable setup, and the first act, when the new reality dawns on clueless Bradley, is watchable. But the plot twists are derivative and the action then becomes dependent on weird stabs of grisliness that are not convincing or consistent with the characterisation. By the end, it’s exasperating – but McAdams delivers a solid performance.
— Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
There is an inkling of a great film buried within Send Help… Sadly, the timid script is hellbent on taking every lazy and unimaginative way out of the tantalizing setup, which leads to an unsatisfying ride held together by the luminous Rachel McAdams in the leading role.
— Joonatan Itkonen, Region Free
Send Help opens in theaters on January 30.
Thumbnail image by Brook Rushton/©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
