Send Help Movie Review: A Bloody Good Time

Sam Raimi blends survival horror and dark comedy in Send Help, anchored by electric performances from Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien.

Before the crash, Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams, of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret) is barely visible in her own workplace. She works in Strategy and Planning, and she’s competent but socially uncomfortable in a way that makes people dismiss her. Conversations die when she enters them. Eye contact is difficult. Her coworkers tolerate her more than they respect her. Even so, she’s been promised a promotion to Vice President by her former boss, a promise that’s become the one thing keeping her going. Then, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien, of Twinless) takes over.

Bradley inherits his position from his father and treats leadership like something that arrived pre-installed.  He doesn’t see Linda as capable or valuable; he sees her as embarrassing. When he gives her promotion to someone else without hesitation, it lands with the casual cruelty of someone who has never once had to worry about consequences. Dylan O’Brien plays Bradley with a grating confidence that feels ever so real. He isn’t outwardly monstrous; he’s worse than that. He’s dismissive, smug, and casually sexist in a way that never registers as cruelty in his own mind. Dylan makes him really insufferable, even giving the character a laugh that is as annoying as he is.

After Linda confronts him, Bradley invites her on his private jet to Bangkok under the guise of letting her “prove herself.” It’s a hollow gesture, but Linda takes it anyway. On the plane, her coworkers discover an old audition tape of her trying out for SURVIVOR, and they mock it openly. Mortified, she deletes her work mid-flight. Minutes later, the plane hits a storm, the cabin tears apart, and people are sucked out into the sky. When Linda wakes up, she’s on an island and finds that Bradley is the only survivor. 

From that point on, the movie becomes something much more pointed. Linda immediately takes action: she finds water, builds shelter, and figures out food. She knows what she’s doing because she’s spent her entire life preparing, even if no one ever took that preparation seriously. Bradley, on the other hand, is useless. He keeps trying to give orders out of instinct, as if authority still exists just because he says it does.

What Send Help understands is that power doesn’t disappear or shift all at once, but rather, it fades. Bradley’s confidence doesn’t vanish overnight; it erodes slowly as the days pass and nothing responds to him anymore. Meanwhile, Linda’s value becomes impossible to ignore because without her, he dies.

The island ends up functioning like a stripped-down version of the office itself. Linda does the labor that keeps everything running, while Bradley gives orders when he can; the difference is that nature doesn’t care about job titles. The film keeps returning to this idea without underlining it: the hierarchy only survives as long as people agree to pretend it makes sense.

Rachel McAdams does some of her best work here. Linda starts the film restrained: her body is tight, and her politeness feels defensive. McAdams lets that repression sit for a long time, never rushing the transformation. When Linda begins to gain confidence, it comes through posture and timing rather than complete dialogue. By the time it all surfaces, it can be unsettling yet satisfying because you realize it’s been there the whole time, just waiting for permission to emerge.

O’Brien matches her well. Bradley is the kind of person who mistakes confidence for competence, but watching him unravel isn’t played for easy catharsis; it’s ugly and even pathetic. The film doesn’t soften him into a caricature, which makes his desperation easy to laugh at.

Send Help is often genuinely funny, especially early on. Raimi allows scenes to stretch and breathe, giving both actors room to find humor in discomfort rather than punchlines. There’s something deeply satisfying about watching two performers this good bounce off each other with almost no outside interference.

Still, Raimi’s direction may surprise fans. For much of the runtime, he holds back. The wild stylistic flourishes people associate with him are muted, showing up only in brief flashes. There’s an early boar-hunting sequence that hints at the chaos to come, but much of the first half feels intentionally grounded. Whether that restraint works will depend on your patience: at times the film drifts. Certain survival beats repeat themselves, and the momentum slows enough that you can feel the story treading water. That restraint feels intentional, though it does come at a cost: the middle portion meanders, and a few scenes feel like placeholders rather than escalation.

When Raimi finally lets loose in the last stretch, though, it’s unmistakably him. Blood sprays, bodies break down, and fluids fly; it’s gross and exhilarating. The contrast almost makes you wish that energy had arrived sooner, but the film has so much fun once it commits.

The ending is bleak and feels honest to everything before it. There’s no triumphant escape, no sense that survival equals justice. Send Help doesn’t seem interested in interrogating the morality of Linda’s choices so much as accepting them. It’s not about whether she’s right, but more about what happens when someone who’s been ignored her entire life finally holds power. The final note suggests that escaping one hierarchy doesn’t guarantee liberation from the next. Power simply changes hands, and the cost of holding it may be higher than expected.

Send Help doesn’t always move smoothly: it meanders, some scenes linger too long, and Raimi’s restraint can test your patience. But underneath those flaws is something sharp and angry and funny. This survival thriller reveals itself as a workplace horror story, one where the scariest thing isn’t the island, but how easily people accept hierarchy until it’s ripped away. 

By the end, you’re left with an unsettling thought: maybe the crash didn’t change these characters at all. Maybe it just removed the lies that kept everything polite. And once those are gone, there’s no rescue coming.

Send Help will be released in US theatres on January 30, 2026 and in UK & Irish cinemas on February 6.