Director: Sam Raimi
Starring: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Dennis Haysbert
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 115 mins

Send Help is a horror comedy directed by Sam Raimi, his first wholly original work since Drag Me To Hell all the way back in 2009. The always-reliable Rachel McAdams plays hard-working corporate strategist Linda Liddle, who’s been looking forward to a long-promised promotion at work. But when the CEO of the company dies, and his repugnant son, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) takes the mantle, Linda’s promotion is given to a recent hire who he happened to be fraternity brothers with. When she accompanies the team on a business trip to Bangkok, the plane crashes after suffering engine failure and Linda and Bradley find themselves wound up on a deserted island.

It might not be particularly thematically deep, but Send Help is a fun and gnarly romp that’s a Sam Raimi film through-and-through. Blood splatter? Check. Projectile vomit? Check. Rachel McAdams is brilliant as the meek office worker and shares an excellent chemistry with Dylan O’Brien’s loathsome CEO. As you’d expect, the tables turn because it just so happens Linda auditioned for a television show called ‘Survivor’, so knows a thing or two on how to sustain herself, while Bradley requires spoon-feeding. There’s a real thrill in witnessing the duo play off each other and you’re always questioning what their ulterior motives are.

Blending horror and comedy is perhaps the most difficult genre mix to pull off, but Raimi is reasonably successful here, although I wouldn’t call this a scary film in the slightest and while some of the jokes really land, others fall flat. One has to suspend belief a little in the third act where there’s perhaps one rug pull too many, but to Raimi’s credit, the finale is suitably vicious and nasty. It’s all accompanied by a somewhat subdued Danny Elfman score, and Bill Pope’s cinematography is uncharacteristically unshowy for a Sam Raimi film.

Send Help is an enjoyable romp with a standout Rachel McAdams performance that reminded me of Lord of the Flies, only under the veil of a corporate satire rather than a bunch of schoolboys. I wanted a bit more meat to the bone in terms of its themes and some of its beats are repetitive, but this is a fun, if not especially enriching, experience that only Sam Raimi could have concocted.