Subscribe to our FREE Newsletter, or Telegram and WhatsApp channels for the latest stories and updates.
Sam Raimi’s Send Help (2026) starts off promisingly. Rachel McAdams is Linda Liddle from the Strategy & Planning department of Bradley Preston’s (Dylan O’Brien) company — a company he took over after his father passed.
Before he passed, Bradley’s dad promised Linda that she would be promoted to VP. Sure, she talks to and shares food with her pet bird at night, but Linda is one of the company’s most loyal and hardworking employees.
Armed with the confidence of a verbal agreement and the belief that he remembers her from the company’s Christmas party, Linda walks right up to Bradley on the day he’s introduced as the new CEO.
The whole time, she had a smidge of leftover tuna on her bottom lip from the sandwich she was chomping down for lunch.
This is exactly the vibe Bradley is not going for.
Add that to the scruffy, unsexy clothes that she wears to the office everyday, and she’s definitely not VP material in his eyes.
When Linda learns that Bradley gave the VP position to his frat buddy, Donovan, she storms into his office with a boldness that he “can admire”. So he doesn’t give her the VP position, but a seat on the plane on a very important business trip to Bangkok with his new VP and some other douchebags colleagues.
What the douchebags colleagues don’t know (but we do, from an earlier scene) is that Linda is a huge Survivor fan. Donovan somehow finds Linda’s Survivor audition tape and while Linda is literally busy working on the plane, the boys huddle to watch and have a laugh.
Everybody has a limit. And this was Linda’s.
Soon after, the plane experienced strange, strong turbulence and came crashing down — leaving only Linda and her boss stranded on a deserted island.
But Linda is a survivor. And not just because she knows how to start fires, build sturdy huts, collect rainwater, and hunt and kill a boar in the wild.
But because she’s survived seven years of corporate purgatory. Only to be let down, overlooked, and tossed around like she’s worthless.
As the story progresses, we soon learn that Linda has survived a lot more than that.
Without revealing too much, let’s just say that Linda’s entire experience with Bradley on the island is basically her “live long enough to see yourself become a villain” moment.
The film is not without flaws, IMO. The absurdities escalate to the point where I found myself questioning what kind of movie this is: Is it a horror? Comedy? Romance? Female revenge?
And even if it is a blend of genres, it feels like it’s neither. Despite the movie’s almost 2-hour runtime, it felt like there wasn’t enough time for the comedy to land before the horror kicked in, and so forth.
Or maybe the jumpy pacing was intentional to mirror Linda’s experience of being gaslighted. If that was the intention, then Raimi did a great job.
It’s obvious that Sam Raimi was having a field day making this movie.
The extreme close-ups to trigger discomfort. The projectile vomiting. The projectile bleeding. It’s all very Sam Raimi — and it’s great to see, although the digital effects were a bit too toyish for me to appreciate.
McAdams and O’Brien are both strong on screen. Their characters are maximalists. Bradley is a full-blown, egoistical nepo baby and acts like it regardless if at the boardroom or the beach. I absolutely despised Bradley.
I got increasingly annoyed with Linda for giving him chance after chance when I really wanted her to just kill him off. But Linda’s saviour complex has always been her downfall. It’s either she keeps being a doormat, or she learns to wipe the dirt off for once.
Send Help explores interesting themes of power play, class wars, and gender inequality — all classic and persistent workplace dilemmas of the 21st century.
It’s not like they tread lightly with these themes, but I do feel like it could have hit harder.
This 9-minute Malaysian short film, for example, touches on the same themes, is absurd, and does not hold back at all.
Apple TV’s Severance is another great example of leaning wholeheartedly into office satire on-screen.
However, Send Help is still a great watch. If you have pent up office rage and no deserted island to scream from, live vicariously through Linda Liddle.
Send Help opens in cinemas nationwide on 29 January 2026.
READ MORE: Joon Goh’s ‘MOP’ Is An Unfiltered Look At Power, Submission & Survival
READ MORE: What If You Could Leave Work At The Office? Why Malaysians Will Love Severance
Share your thoughts with us via TRP’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Threads.
Rachel McAdams & Dylan O’Brien Do Survivor-Style Team Building In ‘Send Help’ [Review]
Entertainment Flash Report
Comments
Post a Comment