Send Help: Film Review

"Send Help"Directed by Sam RaimiWritten by Damian Shannon and Mark SwiftStarring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'BrienRated R for strong/bloody violence and languageRuntime: 113 minutesRelease Date: January 30, 2026

Final Thought

McAdams and O'Brien are bright spots in Sam Raimi's exciting but forgettable thriller/satire, whose derivative script can't be saved by a bloody sheen.

Rating:

★★.5 / 5

Logline

From 20th Century Studios:

In 20th Century Studios’ “Send Help,” two colleagues become stranded on a deserted island, the only survivors of a plane crash. On the island, they must overcome past grievances and work together to survive, but ultimately, it's a battle of wills and wits to make it out alive.

Review - Raimi Reheats Östlund’s Nachos

In 2022, Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. This was his second time being awarded honor, and it, in fact, later carried him to three Academy Award nominations for the film the following year, including Best Picture.

In that film, a biting satire on elitist capitalist societies, Dolly De Leon (affectionately known by Ariana DeBose as “Dolly De”) plays Abigail, an unassuming Filipina cruise ship custodian turned unforgiving leader once the ship on which we meet our influential characters crashes on a deserted island. Social hierarchy is flipped on its head as Östlund’s script deftly explores the relationship between the upper and lower working classes. The character of Abigail (and Dolly De’s amazing and under-lauded performance) still, to this day, stands out as one of my favorite characters from a film in this chaotic decade. So imagine my surprise, confusion, and ultimate disappointment when I realized about 30 minutes into this press screening that Send Help, Sam Raimi’s new action-thriller starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, basically copied Östlund’s whole fucking flow. Word for word. Bar for bar.

In Send Help, McAdams’ Linda Liddle (whose alliterative name presumes an icon status that will likely never be reached) is a longtime Strategy and Planning executive at an unnamed (or unremarkably named) consulting firm who is obsessed with Survivor and is long overdue for a promotion. She’s a workaholic to a T. Seemingly all at once, though, her mentor and longtime boss dies, is replaced by his son, the arrogant Bradley Preston, played by Dylan O’Brien (who fits this role like a glove), and she is subsequently passed over for her promotion in favor of Bradley’s golfing buddy Donovan (Xavier Samuel). In an effort to appease Linda, Bradley offers her an opportunity to join him and his new executive board on a work trip to prove her worth. To his dismay, she accepts, but what neither of them knows is that their plane will crash in the sea, leaving only the two of them as survivors, and only one of them with the skills to survive.

It’s not the setup I take issue with. Though I feel it’s fairly simple - again, the consulting firm at which they work might as well be called “The Consulting Firm” - I think it’s an interesting enough premise. Cast Away unfortunately made it impossible for any story about being stranded on a deserted island alone to exist without an overwhelming shadow, and in Triangle of Sadness, the only primary difference between that film and this is the presence of about 4 or 5 more people on the island.

Left to right: Dylan O'Brien and Rachel McAdams in "Send Help"

What I like about Send Help is that it’s about two. Imagine there only being one thing, one other person, one wall between you and power, control, or loneliness. As much as both of them want to be “on top,” whether it’s because that’s what they’ve always been used to or because they’ve never been there before, it feels like both characters understand their relationship as symbiotic: to have power, you need someone to have power over. O’Brien’s character and, in turn, the gender dynamic of this story are interesting for this reason, because in his world, a penis has power, but McAdams poses a threat of castration (almost literally). I think McAdams, O’Brien, and their characters understand that, and the scenes between the two of them where that struggle, that battle is at the forefront, are where the film and the script shine.

What I don’t like about Send Help is everything else. Sadness succeeds because it takes its first hour to build multiple intriguing character dynamics based around class struggles that Dolly De’s Abigail later dismantles one by one. She almost tortures the upper class, by withholding their food (she’s the only one who knows how to start a fire and cook), exploiting them sexually (sexual favors from those deemed worthy enough granted more food), and forcing them to be subservient (giving the most laborious work to the most offensive of her supervisors). There’s real subtextual weight to almost every decision her character makes. In Send Help, McAdams’ Linda does all the same shit, even ending up in almost identical circumstances (except the sexual shit, though there is a quasi-romantic layer of this story that I didn’t really fuck with) but this time, and because of that, absolutely everything exists on the surface. It almost feels like one of those legacy sequels like Grease 2, Home Alone 3, or Mean Girls 2 where the story is

Rachel McAdams as Linda Liddle in "Send Help"

exactly the same as the original but just with different actors and worse. A film following a similar formula doesn’t necessarily make it a bad film, it just needs an original fresh perspective and to add something new to its conversation. There’s a difference, though, between formulaic and derivative. Because I have seen Triangle of Sadness, Park Chan-wook’s 2025 film No Other Choice, or even Blink Twice (2024, dir. Zoë Kravitz) - another film that bears immense similarity to Send Help, but to explain why would veer too close to spoiler territory - I feel like I saw Send Help 3 years ago. Worse, I feel like I've seen it multiple times in the last 3 years.

The style and tone of the film help it stand out, though, as none of those films embrace pulpy, gory violence in the way Raimi does. This film gets bloody and nasty (though I felt a bit cheated out of one big moment), which makes for an exciting audience experience, I must say. There are a few effective jump-scares, including one featuring Edyll Ismail, whose gorgeous face is under-utilized, but the small amount of scary or truly disturbing material makes me question why the film is marketed as horror, and I think gives the film a bit of an identity crisis. The film has funny moments, as well, but most of the smiles you’ll get from this will be from McAdams' and O’Brien’s chemistry.

As far as deserted island survival pictures go, this film is enjoyable. As far as films about the rage built up inside the corporate American worker, the only thing Raimi (and his screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift) adds to this conversation is blood and gore.

Viewed on 1/22/26 at press screening

Published on 1/26/26

Google Sites

Report abuse