Did someone finally notice that middle-aged women watch horror movies? Or maybe pop culture-savvy director Sam Raimi (the Evil Dead and Spider-Man trilogies) simply enjoys defying expectation. His new horror comedy, Send Help, gives center stage to the kind of person who’s typically the butt of Hollywood’s jokes: a single lady of a certain age with a beloved pet, a questionable wardrobe and a reality TV fixation. Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is more than a little reminiscent of Annie Wilkes in Misery, yet she’s the protagonist of this story. For cabin-fevered moviegoers, that’s undeniably refreshing.
The deal
Corporate drone Linda has spent years diligently pushing numbers for a boss who promised to promote her to vice president upon his departure. But when his son, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien), takes over as CEO, he promptly hands the VP job to his college golfing buddy (Xavier Samuel), who has a habit of taking credit for Linda’s work.
Disgusted by Linda’s lack of social graces, the suavely arrogant Bradley plots to exile her to a satellite branch. First, however, he allows her to tag along on a business trip to Bangkok, when nature intervenes: The company jet goes down over the ocean, killing everyone but Bradley and Linda, who wash up together on a desert island.
Roughing it in the wilderness just happens to be Linda’s hobby. On the plane, Bradley and his bros mocked her when they discovered her audition tape for “Survivor.” But when her know-how is all that can keep her boss alive to await rescue, he’s not laughing.
Will you like it?
A new twist on an old trope is always invigorating. And the desert-island role reversal is a very old one, dating back at least to J.M. Barrie’s popular 1902 play The Admirable Crichton, in which survival skills turn a butler into the master. More recent takes on the theme include Lina Wertmüller’s 1974 art-house darling Swept Away (remade in 2002 as a Madonna vehicle) and the Goldie Hawn/Kurt Russell rom-com Overboard.
In all those stories, a return to nature overturns the class structure while reaffirming the gender hierarchy. An upper-class woman learns to bow down to a stronger, more resourceful proletarian — and falls in love with him. Only in 2022’s Triangle of Sadness (see sidebar) does that convention get reversed, too.
The premise of Send Help has strong similarities to that last film. But while Triangle of Sadness is an arch, high-toned satire, this is a broad, blood-spattered one. Send Help is a duel that plays out in paradise with maximum comic awkwardness, even before things get dark: Imagine the most mismatched “Survivor” finalists ever forced to await Tribal Council together.
The actors make it work, up to a point. One of the original Mean Girls, later rebranded as a rom-com sweetheart, McAdams has the versatility to convey both Linda’s likable underdog qualities and the uglier ones she displays once she’s in charge. Acting with his sloe eyes, O’Brien effectively makes Bradley a jerk but not a fool. We see gears turning in his head as he tries to endear himself to Linda by painting himself as an emotionally deprived poor little rich boy.
The cringe is so strong with these two that it’s almost a relief when the story gets lurid and gross. Raimi leans into that aspect, making gleeful use of 3D format in all kinds of scenes involving pointy objects, such as a wild boar hunt that leaves Linda and the jungle bloody. (“I think I liked that,” she muses.) Exaggerated camera work — extreme close-ups, dramatic drone swoops — adds to the general atmosphere of comic-book outrageousness. We never take the story too seriously, and we get the over-the-top finale we expect.
Whom are we even rooting for at that point, though? That’s basically up to us, because the screenplay by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (Freddy vs. Jason) keeps switching perspectives without bringing certain aspects of the characters’ conflict into focus. Linda is attracted to Bradley, yet no reason is given for this other than her presumed desperation. (Whether they have sex remains so vague that one wonders if a scene was cut.) Send Help satirizes clichés of the “castrating female” without replacing them with much; we’re never sure whether Linda’s more sadistic moments are motivated by romantic disappointment or just general fed-upness with everything Bradley represents.
As a result, Send Help sometimes feels like an attempt to cash in on the “female rage” trend without zeroing in on what women like Linda might actually be mad about. There’s material here for a much darker, more psychologically astute horror story than we get. Still, what we do get is wild enough to be entertaining, making this island a decent escape for a few hours of a gray February.
If you like this, try…
Triangle of Sadness (2022; Disney+, Hulu, Kanopy, rentable): If you can endure the fatuous model-influencers at the center of director Ruben Ostlund’s class war satire about an ill-fated cruise, you’ll savor the subversive shocks of its second half.
Drag Me to Hell (2009; HBO Max, rentable): In Raimi’s comically twisted horror fable, a young woman’s casual capitalist cruelty inspires a curse that imperils her soul.
Red Eye (2005; Pluto TV, Paramount+, Starz, YouTube Primetime, rentable): Want more of McAdams in thriller mode, playing out a duel with a cunning male antagonist (Cillian Murphy) in a confined space? The late, great Wes Craven directed this lean and mean suspense flick, set mostly on a plane.
This article appears in Love & Marriage Issue • 2026.
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