After spending years in the Marvel machine and chasing big-budget spectacle, Sam Raimi has returned to what he does best: gleefully nasty horror-comedy that makes audiences squirm and laugh in equal measure.
Send Help, which hits theaters this week, reunites Raimi with the gonzo energy that made Evil Dead II a cult classic. The premise is deliciously simple: corporate underling Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) gets passed over for promotion by her smug boss Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien). When their private jet crashes on an uninhabited island in the Gulf of Thailand, the power dynamics reverse spectacularly.
McAdams thrives in survival mode. O'Brien does not. Carnage—both physical and psychological—ensues.
Critics are calling it McAdams' best comedy performance since Mean Girls, which is saying something. IndieWire's Alison Foreman awarded it an A-, praising Raimi's "gruesome ingenuity" and describing the film as "ghastly without being grim." That's the sweet spot Raimi has always occupied—violence that's cartoonish enough to be funny, but committed enough to have stakes.
The Variety review notes the film shares DNA with Triangle of Sadness, another recent class-reversal satire. But where that film was coldly European in its precision, Send Help is gleefully American in its excess. Raimi doesn't do subtle social commentary—he does workplace revenge fantasies with bodily fluids.
