I didn’t know that I needed the feral, unhinged, blood-soaked version of Rachel McAdams in my life, but I did. That’s the one who appears in Send Help, Sam Raimi’s survival thriller that opens this week. While this does have some issues, after seeing McAdams in so many polished roles recently, is this ever a refreshing change of pace.
She portrays Linda Liddle, who works in strategy and planning at a corporate consulting firm. The business’ previous owner promised her a promotion to vice president, but after his death, his son Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) takes over as CEO and hands the position to his golfing buddy who’s been at the company for six months. Awesomely, the company’s private plane breaks apart somewhere over the Gulf of Thailand, and while the executive dudebros all push one another out of the aircraft while trying to save themselves, Bradley and Linda stay strapped in their seats and wash up on some uncharted island. As it happens, Linda’s lifelong dream has been to compete on Survivor, so she has the skills to keep them alive, not that Bradley appreciates that.
McAdams is in balls-to-the-wall mode here, and that works quite well at the film’s beginning, where she’s playing someone who’s overeager, cracks jokes that nobody laughs at, and has no ability to read the room. It also works well at the end, when the movie starts edging toward Evil Dead territory. It works less well in the middle of the film, when Linda locates her power while making shelters and spears for hunting out of bamboo. She is attracted to Bradley (and the movie reverses the usual dynamic of films like these by having her accidentally see him bathing naked in the ocean), and yet her attempts to flirt with him come off like McAdams’ own mannerisms rather than the poorly socialized Linda’s.
Regardless, O’Brien makes a proper foil. I found him a boring actor at the beginning of his career, but that’s because he was miscast playing heroic types in the Maze Runner movies and American Assassin. He’s far better at playing smarmy guys who think they’re much smoother and more interesting than they actually are. In last fall’s The Anniversary, he made a great impression as the least talented of his siblings who happily hands his brilliant sisters over to a fascist government so that he can be its golden boy. Here he relishes playing a guy who forces his father’s right-hand man (Dennis Haysbert) to assume degrading postures to keep his job. In the wilderness, Bradley tries to assert his dominance over Linda and threatens to fire her when all she has to do is point to their surroundings to show how empty his threats are, and when he tries to make a distress sign, he spells the word “HEPL” on the beach.
It’s unfortunate that the movie falls apart as it reaches the conclusion. The filmmakers can’t reconcile the Linda who is horrorstruck at her own capacity for violence with the one who comes out the other side of this story. Still, when Linda and Bradley conclude (despite their own previous efforts at detente) that the island isn’t big enough for both of them, the result is a pretty funny and satisfying fight that includes strangulation, biting, eye-gouging, and catty remarks. The final credit sequence also gives instructions for double floor lashing to build a raft out of bamboo and vines. That and the sight of McAdams going memorably berserk after killing a wild boar for dinner are worth taking away from Send Help.
Send Help
Starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien. Directed by Sam Raimi. Written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. Rated R.
