Right before the big plane crash that sets Sam Raimi’s new film “Send Help” into motion, Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) sits alone, clacking away at a keyboard as she solves a problem with the company’s upcoming merger that none of her male colleagues (younger, dumber, and meaner than her), have the slightest idea how to tackle.
A few feet away from her, those aforementioned male colleagues have discovered an audition tape Linda once made for the reality show “Survivor.” While Linda saves their asses, they laugh at her naked desire to be chosen – after all, what could be funnier than trying so hard when you don’t have to?
The first section of Raimi’s film (with a script from Mark Swift and Damian Shannon) is spent setting up the fundamental differences between Linda and these men, particularly her new boss, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien). Bradley and his ilk put on the appearance of corporate seriousness, hiding the fact that they have no discernable skills whatsoever behind designer suits and rounds of golf. Linda works harder than any of them, but in their eyes, she’s putting her effort into the wrong things. She doesn’t dress up, or wear make-up, or wash her hair, apparently. She doesn’t care about anything but the work – the exact opposite of what they care about. And that’s where tribalism comes into play.
“Survivor” is not the only reality show that Raimi’s film calls to mind. “Send Help” is like a cross between “Survivor,” and “Fear Factor,” and “Bachelor in Paradise” or “Love Island,” all infused with Raimi’s signature brand of gory, glorious stupidity. The filmmakers don’t seem to necessarily want to comment on the reality genre or the gender politics that inevitably arise (and, honestly, thank God for that). But, they’re clearly having a grand old time playing around in that sandbox, following the golden rule of great reality television to a T – take fundamentally opposed forces, trap them in a single location, and let them cook.
After the plane crash, where Bradley and Linda are the only two survivors, their boss and employee dynamic suddenly takes on a new shape. On its face, that original dynamic feels a bit dated – an overworked, underappreciated woman gets one over on her sexist, narcissistic boss (“9 to 5,” but make it horror). But, Raimi and the writers smartly are far more interested in wringing the humor out of the situation than taking it too seriously.
For as terribly as Bradley is, Linda doesn’t come off as purely pitiful. Her appearance certainly plays a role in why Bradley and the others treat her the way they do (frumping up Rachel Freaking McAdams is a thankless task, but “Send Help” doesn’t do a half bad job), but she doesn’t make things easy for herself. She makes bad jokes. She eats smelly tuna sandwiches at her desk. Again, it really seems like she doesn’t shower at all. This is all exaggerated in that signature Raimi way, employing intense close ups on the tuna salad on Linda’s upper lip, or on other pupils dilating in disgust as they notice it.
Linda, a bit idealistically, doesn’t quite grasp why anything about her general appearance should be upsetting if she gets her work done. The deserted island where she and Bradley wind up offers an oasis to her corporate prison where the only thing that matters is survival. Bradley is forced to appreciate her – in particular, the knowledge she has that would come into play on “Survivor,” the very thing he was making fun of earlier (and he is, quite literally, useless). As the sun goes down on the first night, Linda looks out over the ocean, smiling and crying tears of joy. She’s found the one place where appearances literally don’t matter – and she doesn’t plan to leave any time soon.
As with any great Raimi collaborator, both McAdams and O’Brien are more than willing to be the butt of the joke. O’Brien is positioned in the lineage of Bruce Campbell (Campbell appears in a small cameo as a portrait of Bradley’s dead father), but almost as the inversion of Campbell’s character Ash in Raimi’s “Evil Dead” movies – a big dumb villain rather than a big dumb hero, although the line between the two becomes blurry as time goes on. It’s McAdams, however, who gets more of a chance to play with that type of goofy, slapsticky physicality. She starts off hunched and furrowed, but (in one of the film’s subtler, funnier gags) the more time Linda spends on the island, the more she seems to blossom. She literally gets hotter while Bradley suffers and sputters out of control. After a bad sunburn, he laments: “You think my skin is ever gonna recover from this?” Linda, meanwhile, has fashioned herself a hat from palm leaves.
As their time on the island goes on, Bradley sways from dismissing Linda, to needing her, to suspecting her of not wanting them to leave this island at all (and he may be right on that front). Their ever-changing dynamics are where the reality TV of it all comes more into play, interspersed with gore (a deadite-esque figure even shows up at one point) and the best kind of dumb jokes.
Early in the film, Linda tells her bird (she lives alone, with a bird, and there is a literal book on her shelf entitled “How to Talk to Your Bird.”) that Bradley flirted with her at the Christmas Party, setting up a bit of a crush. The film pokes at the tropes of not only challenge-based shows like “Survivor,” but relationship-based reality television as well. In these shows, contestants are constantly gaming out how to make it just one more day – who do I need to pretend to like today to make it tomorrow and maybe meet someone new? Bradley and Linda circle around each other in a similar manner, these social dynamics made all the funnier by the fact that they spend their days fighting wild boars, the elements, and each other. At one point, Bradley, down on his knees, gives a speech that feels akin to the final proposal on “The Bachelor” – “I love you so f*cking much,” he says, shaking his head and laughing as tears escape his eyes. Except, Bradley’s bleeding while he says this, and his laugh is a little too forced, a little too loud, and Linda’s eye has been gouged out by this point. But, hey – all’s fair in love and war, right?