Send Help

Official Australian release date: 29/1/26. Viewed: 15/2/26.
Director: Sam Raimi
Actors: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail, Xavier Samuel
Genre: Thriller / Comedy
Rating: MA

‘Send Help’ is a modern ‘Cast Away’, but with a bit more action and comedy. We meet Linda Liddle (McAdams) at a consulting job, working for Bradley Pearson (O’Brien), a typical Wall Street douche-bro, who promotes fellow douche Donovan (Samuel) over Linda. The film does well to make McAdams believably frumpish, and her colleagues distasteful, so when the plane crashes, you’re not too upset with the outcome! Her ‘Survivor’ applicant backstory obviously comes in handy, as her and Bradley try to survive on a remote island somewhere near Thailand.

There’s plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, as Raimi leans into the unhinged-ness and power-imbalance, where we’re never quite sure which way things are going to go between Linda & Bradley. The CGI boar was particularly fun, as was the over-the-top amounts of vomit. There’s some slow moments in the middle, but it keeps moving to an unpredictable ending. The only other actor with any real screentime is Bradley’s fiancée, Zuri (Ismail).

The Elfman score is great, and nice to see some Aussie beaches filling in for Thailand (and some road filling in for the USA). It’s not overly long at ~1 hour 45min. McAdams is great, and does well to evolve, rather than fully-transform, into the heroine, and O’Brien is good as well. Probably not as good as ‘Drag Me To Hell’ for mine, but treads the line of thriller & comedy well.

Overall: Another fun Raimi “who’ll survive”?

Gav’s Rating: 3.5 stars