Send Help Review: Dark, Deranged and Impossible To Shake Off

Corporate Cruelty And A Plane Ride From Hell

Enter Bradley Preston, played by Dylan O'Brien, the new CEO who has stepped into the role following the sudden death of his father. Preston is every bit the entitled corporate prince you expect him to be. Smug, casually dismissive, and quietly cruel, he treats Linda like an inconvenience while dangling just enough hope to keep her compliant and desperate for validation.

He invites her on a private jet to Bangkok with a group of male executives for merger discussions, suggesting that if she proves herself, the Vice President position could still be hers, spoken with a smile that never quite reaches his eyes.

Linda believes him. She works obsessively during the flight, fuelled by fragile optimism and years of swallowed resentment, while the men mock her behind her back with the easy confidence of people who know they will never face consequences. They laugh at her recorded audition tape for the reality survival show Survivor, a detail that initially feels like a throwaway joke but later becomes wickedly prophetic.

Humiliated and heartbroken, Linda shuts her laptop, only for the plane to hit violent turbulence moments later. The crash is sudden, brutal, and terminal for everyone on board except Linda and Preston, who wash ashore on a deserted island with nothing but resentment, fear, and unresolved hatred between them.

Two Horrible People, One Island, Zero Morals

What follows is not a story about bonding or redemption in the conventional sense. Linda and Preston do not suddenly become better people because they are stranded together. If anything, the island strips them down to their ugliest instincts and sharpest edges.

They bicker, manipulate, resent, and actively sabotage each other while attempting to survive, often prioritising petty power struggles over basic common sense. The film’s greatest trick is making you despise both characters repeatedly while still forcing you to empathise with them in flashes that feel deeply uncomfortable.

The moral ambiguity here is deliciously off the charts. Preston continues to assert dominance even when he is clearly useless in survival situations, clinging desperately to hierarchy as if corporate structures still exist between palm trees and broken wreckage.

Linda, initially portrayed as the victim, gradually reveals a darker, more unhinged side that challenges the audience’s instinctive sympathy. Her intelligence becomes dangerous. Her anger becomes purposeful. The film thrives in this uncomfortable space, refusing to tell you who to root for and daring you to sit with that discomfort without offering relief.

Gore, Goo, And Glorious Restraint

One of Send Help’s biggest strengths is its commitment to staying funny even when things become deeply unpleasant. The humour never evaporates, even as the situation grows increasingly deranged and morally slippery.

Raimi understands that comedy and horror share the same bloodstream, and he plays that connection with gleeful precision and mean spirited joy. There is gore here, plenty of it, and a surprising amount of ickiness that will genuinely test weaker stomachs and shorter attention spans.

What makes the gore effective is restraint. It is visceral without becoming numbing or exhausting. There are moments involving hunting, injuries, blood, and bodily fluids that sound ridiculous on paper, particularly a sequence involving a wild boar that could have easily tipped into parody.

Instead, the execution grounds these moments just enough to make them unsettling rather than absurd. The gore enhances the atmosphere instead of overpowering it, making every messy beat feel earned rather than gratuitous.

A Screenplay That Knows When To Escalate

Written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, the screenplay understands escalation better than most genre films that attempt this balancing act. The character arcs of Linda and Preston are structured in reverse, with one gaining sympathy as the other loses it, only for those perceptions to keep shifting as circumstances worsen. This constant recalibration of power, control, and audience allegiance becomes the film’s core hook and its most reliable weapon.

Importantly, Send Help avoids the trap that many comedy thrillers fall into where the big twists collapse under the weight of their own buildup. The film’s tight runtime of under two hours ensures there is very little narrative fat or indulgent detouring.

Scenes arrive, explode, and move on without overstaying their welcome. The screenplay stays frantic, sharp, and unpredictable, delivering one mind bending turn after another without losing coherence or emotional momentum.

Performances That Do The Heavy Lifting

Rachel McAdams delivers one of the most ferociously committed performances of her career here. As Linda, she anchors the film almost entirely on her own terms. The subtle shifts in her expressions, the way her posture changes as power dynamics flip, and the gradual unveiling of her character’s volatility are handled with surgical precision. You fear her, pity her, and somehow still want her to win, even when she does objectively terrible things that would be unforgivable in any other context.

Dylan O'Brien matches her beat for beat. His natural charm makes Preston tolerable even when he is being utterly insufferable, which is no small feat given how aggressively awful the character often is. As the balance of control shifts, O'Brien allows vulnerability to seep through the arrogance without softening the character too much. Their chemistry is volatile, ugly, and electric, and the film depends entirely on that dynamic. Thankfully, both actors deliver with frightening ease.