Sam Raimi’s new movie, Send Help, is like a reimagination of movies like Cast Away with a wacky, dark sense of humor. The movie, in its initial bits, has this peppy rhythm leading up to the main event, and post that, it is trying to reinvent itself. Although the developments are somewhat familiar initially, it becomes more of a character exploration after a point, and we get to know a different side of the main character as the movie progresses. With the humor and payoffs consistently keeping us invested in the developments, Send Help is a fun and twisted self-help movie.
Linda Liddle, our central character, is a nerdy strategist in a corporate company, and she was offered the role of Vice President by the CEO as an appreciation for her contributions. However, when he passed away, and his son Bradley Preston took over the company, he decided against his father’s plans, and that shatters Linda. While Bradley and Linda, along with their other colleagues, were going for a business meeting in Bangkok on a chartered flight, the plane crashed in the sea, and Bradley and Linda were the only survivors who ended up on an island. How these two, who couldn’t stand each other for obvious reasons, survive on that island is what we see in Send Help.
Sam Raimi and his writing duo, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, are aware of the fact that people have a good idea about what usually happens in this sort of movie. The betterment of the relationship, self-realization, and profound awakening, etc., are the kinds of stuff we have seen in movies that had similar backdrops. So the screenplay is basically teasing us by making us feel it would go in that path, but it tweaks everything smartly and sharply. The earlier portions of the movie that show the lonely corporate struggle of Linda actually have a lot of foreshadowing through props and dialogue. It is actually the clever way some of the dialogues are placed in the movie that makes the finale of Send Help impressive. As the movie approaches the end, it manages to confuse us in deciding who is actually the nastiest of the two.
A two-character survival thriller where you are constantly trying to decode the true character of both of them is somewhat tricky, as the information has to be placed inside the casual conversation. It’s a movie where two characters are actually doubting each other, and the screenplay manages to distract us from various possibilities by deliberately focusing on the strategies of the characters. And if you look at the way some of the thrilling scenes are constructed, you can see that they are letting us win in predicting the beginning of the scene, but the latter part of the sequence would be constructed differently. The gory nature of the survival struggle inside that island actually creates a fun contrast as the movie is taking a sarcastic jab at motivational figures. The visual effects in certain wider shots weren’t that great, while the production design in general was fine. The lack of background score and the dependence on sound design to build tension work in favor of the movie. The cinematography occasionally goes into these unsettling, extremely close camera angles and movement tracking, which elevates the humor of those moments.
There is an evident difference in the way the character Linda carries herself at the beginning of the film and at the end. And the story here is basically about that transition. Rachel McAdams manages to portray the nerdy bits of that character without overdoing it, and one could see a step-by-step evolution of that character during the island chapter. Dylan O’Brien is also showing us the transition of an entitled brat boss to someone who realizes how inept he is without someone working for him. Some of the hilarious scenes in the movie actually limit Dylan from using his entire body, and the way he conveyed the tension in those moments with limited resources was top-notch.
Send Help is a movie that takes a seemingly generic idea of survival and blends it with the implications of ego. One could see the writing and staging of sequences taking a deliberate effort to make the minor details in the sequences interesting for the viewer. With the energy never dropping and the storytelling keeping us hooked to know what will eventually happen, Send Help is a gory, sarcastic character drama that rarely disappoints.
