Send Help

A campy survival comedy undone by its own third act

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While bursting onto the scene with the inventive comedy-horror The Evil Dead (1981), Sam Raimi also helped pioneer the superhero craze of the 2010s by directing the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy. Yet after such big-budget success, he has only returned to directing for the big screen once in the past thirteen years, with another Marvel film, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). Those studio projects proved constraining to his twisted creativity. With the mid-budget action comedy Send Help (2026), Raimi returns to a less restrained mode.

Send Help centers on the brilliant but awkward Linda (Rachel McAdams), a devoted survivalism enthusiast who is passed over for a promotion when her strategic solutions company is inherited by the young and pompous Bradley (Dylan O’Brien). While on a business trip, their plane crashes, stranding the two on a deserted island. Here, the power hierarchy flips: Linda thrives in her element, building shelter, starting fires, and gathering supplies, while Bradley, injured and utterly unprepared, finds himself at her mercy.

The film is written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, marking only their fourth produced script in 23 years. Their previous credits include Freddy vs. Jason (2003), the remake of Friday the 13th (2009), and the Baywatch (2017) remake, which begins to clue viewers in to the limitations of their material. Send Help is their first original script and represents an improvement over their past work; though that isn’t saying much. The reversal of power dynamics and the stripped-down focus on survival offer a strong premise for both character and action. Yet these elements, along with the film’s themes and even its final twist, feel blatantly lifted from Triangle of Sadness (2022), which operates on an almost identical setup. As a result, it’s difficult to see Send Help as anything other than another derivative exercise from Shannon and Swift.

The script is easily the weakest aspect of Send Help, weighed down by cringeworthy dialogue and recycled character beats. The plot veers into outright nonsense, with characters suddenly appearing on the island to force dramatic turns so incongruously that I initially assumed it was a dream sequence. The characters themselves are sketched as clichés, with little attempt at depth, or worse, consistency. Given that Triangle of Sadness already established the basic framework, all that was required was fidelity to the characters as written. Instead, the film lurches through irrational shifts in motivation, only to snap back to its original dynamic moments later.

Shannon and Swift are partially saved by Raimi’s direction, which leans heavily into camp and satire, making the bad writing feel intentional rather than accidental. This approach carries much of the first two acts, rendering Send Help a serviceable, if unoriginal, comedy. However, Raimi’s restlessness with the material becomes apparent when he veers into the hyper-violent horror of his Evil Dead days, a tonal shift that clashes sharply with the rest of the film. This culminates in a bonkers finale that so completely abandons established tone, character logic, and narrative coherence that it feels as though the writers left their computer unattended and a twelve-year-old finished the script for them. Such is the baffling presentation of the film’s third act.

The film’s true saving grace lies not only in Raimi’s more restrained instincts, but in its two leads. McAdams and O’Brien commit far more to the material than it arguably deserves. Both grasp the campy balance Raimi is aiming for, allowing them to power through the script’s more face-palming lines. They lean heavily on physical comedy and nonverbal performance, injecting some semblance of depth into otherwise thinly drawn characters. Their banter crackles with chemistry, even if the hinted romantic edge never fully materializes.

In the end, Send Help is largely a mediocre but passable comedy, undone by a third act so wildly off-course that it erases much of the film’s thematic momentum and potential commentary. The result feels less like a conclusion than a mistaken splice from an entirely different movie. While Shannon and Swift remain unable to escape their Hollywood reputation, they are fortunate to have a committed cast and a steady enough director to make parts of Send Help digestible.

4.8/10