Send Help

• Directed and Co-Produced by Sam Raimi
• January 21, 2026 (TCL Chinese Theatre) / January 30, 2026 (US)

An employee and her boss are stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash and try to survive with tensions rising between the two.

For me, the real selling point for seeing Send Help was the involvement of Sam Raimi. His skills in horror comedy were shown early with the Evil Dead movies that made him a viable director. Even his later stuff like his first foray into the superhero genre with Liam Neeson showed an adept hand at dark humor mixed with seriousness. My curiosity was built on that.

We are quickly introduced to sad sack highly positioned office drone and survival enthusiast Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) who is a human doormat that gets walked all over or just ignored by everyone in the office despite her implied competence to the point of being indispensable. Yay? I know this is supposed to be humorous but watching how pathetic she was for me was a poor way to start. It’s a heavy dump implying she’s far worse than what the movie can show. If this were closer to something from ZAZ, her nature or any number of other characters would be more palatable.

We have a pathetic human being who’s paired with a young, entitled douchebag in the form of Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) that is the son of the (late?) company owner. He is demonstrated quickly to be incapable of the type of decisions that would ensure the stability or long-term survival of the company blatantly so to the point you are unsure of why dad thought it was a good idea to turn it over to him.

Some of this is built around the reality show Survivor and Linda’s obsession with it. That Survivor element feels like some bad bit of corporate synergy or whatever you wanna call it though not sure if anybody that controls those rights is involved here. We get clips of the show and even some Jeff Probst audio because why not? I guess her obsession is used to make her initial survival plausible. 

Neither character was likable or enjoyable to watch for much of Send Help. Linda started out as quite pathetic and Bradley wasn’t even an entertaining jerk. If the goal was to eventually flip the script so to speak and make the character that was likable unlikable and the unlikable character likable it took too long to get there and it was not that noticeable. Or was this supposed to be some kind of empowerment film where the poorly treated individual overcomes gives it to the crappy individual? If that were the case, all she did was become something worse than the guy she defeated.

As time goes on and based on things we see Linda has decided to maroon her and Bradley on the island since we see rescue is possible. What exactly was her long-term goal? Is it to make him fall in love? She was clinging to a nice comment he had made at a company party until she wasn’t. Or is it to prove that she was the better choice for the job than the other guy who got it? Both have their merits as does her venting all sorts of rage on him.

The climax offers a few reveals that add to how devious and messed up Linda was while also making Bradley much more of a victim to her mechanizations. Raimi pushes to keep him as a bit of a jerk leaving me confused on if the end scene is to make Linda look victorious or dangerous.

Send Help clicks with the action and some of the visuals but falls a little short with certain character aspects.