Film Review: Send Help (2026): Rachel McAdams Faces Off With Dylan O’Brien in Sam Raimi’s Terrifically Rendered Survival Tale
Send Help Review
Send Help (2026) Film Review, a movie directed by Sam Raimi, written by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift and starring Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Dennis Haysbert, Kristy Best, Emma Raimi, Thaneth Warakulnukroh, Brad Flett and Bruce Campbell.
Sam Raimi’s dark comedy, Send Help, is, surprisingly enough, a brilliant and terrifying tale of survival about a couple of people stuck on an island who must work together, despite their personality clashes, to stay alive. Rachel McAdams is showcased in the role of her career as Linda Liddle, a finance whiz who is passed over for a promotion so a man who knows less than her can get her desired job. He has the right personality even though he doesn’t know half as much as Linda. Meanwhile, the golf-playing boss who neglected to see the potential in Linda, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien has never been better), doesn’t like that Linda eats smelly tuna fish sandwiches at her cubicle and he calls her out on it.
Director Raimi sets the stage for a showdown between a boss and the smartest employee in their company. As the pair end up stuck on an island after a plane crash, maybe, just maybe, they’ll be able to get along and see past their differences in order to stay alive.
Bradley is engaged to be married to an attractive woman named Zuri (the excellent Edyll Ismail) and could never have interest in Linda romantically, right? With Zuri out of the picture for a bit, could Bradley and Linda manage to strike up some sparks on the island they both find themselves inhabiting? Raimi will keep you guessing as the plot twists build and are thrust upon the audience with fine craftsmanship by the accomplished filmmaker.
We soon learn there’s more than meets the eye to both of these characters, Linda in particular. It seems Linda likes the new position she finds herself in where she controls Bradley’s every move while he is severely injured and unable to move efficiently. This is one of Raimi’s most precise and intense films and reminds one of the director’s masterpice, A Simple Plan, in terms of the way the movie creates tension in a masterful way.
Rachel McAdams starts off playing her character as timid, but she’s got an edge to her. It’s not right off the bat that we can tell she’s capable of being able to survive on a deserted island, but she soon proves she’s more than capable of such as she hunts down a local boar to make dinner for herself and, maybe, for Bradley too. This movie paints Bradley as the bad guy for so long that when the possibility of rooting for him arises later in the film, it begs the question of just how many flaws can we expect Linda to have and still like her?
While the early office scenes show a smart, but flawed, woman, the latter scenes in the film prove she’s got the smarts for the job she was passed over for and when the film pits Bradley against Linda, it’s an all-out fight to the finish. There will probably be only one of them left standing by the time the conclusion rolls, especially if Zuri gives up on her fiance. Spoiler alert: she appears in the film more than just during the opening sequences.
This film features a great plane crash scene as Linda is buckled in as the aircraft is going down and another colleague tries to tear her from her seat. If you didn’t know Linda survived the plane crash (or even if you do know), the movie still consistently proves to be suspenseful and polished throughout. Linda and Bradley start to do some bad things to each other because each wants something different. One wants to stay on the island and one wants to leave. Bradley figures he can escape on a self-built floating concoction, but when that fails, the pair must learn to endure each other and live with one another. They enjoy each other’s company some of the time, but they desperately want different things.
This movie is just like the work of the great Alfred Hitchcock in terms of its basic structure. It’s intense, it’s thought-provoking and it’s well-written. There are no false moves here. There’s a reason that the Blondie song lyrics, “One Way or Another…” are mentioned early in the film and Raimi has the perfect way to unleash the song lyrics again towards the end of the movie.
This is the type of film Julia Roberts and Melanie Griffith made for 20th Century Fox that topped the box-office back in the 1990’s. Those were solid thrillers like Sleeping with the Enemy or Pacific Heights. There was a clear-cut situation in those movies that needed to be resolved and the suspense was amplified from beginning to end by plot twists. Send Help is twistier than a pretzel and even those aforementioned movies. This new film even has enough surprises up its sleeve to rival those found in Raimi’s own A Simple Plan.
McAdams relishes in making her character unpredictable. She’s got the smarts of her character down to a science. O’Brien plays Bradley, the boss from hell, with complexity. He softens up a bit when he knows his life depends on Linda’s help. This is the screen duo of the year and it’s only January, folks. What a year this is going to be if we get more great movies like this. Send Help gets bloody at times and, eventually, other people are going to be arriving on the island and audiences will enjoy the shocking ending to the max. Imagine Cast Away meets Fair Play and you get an idea of what the film is like except Send Help will absolutely surprise you all the way through until the very last scene. This movie is going to get you. One way or another.
Rating: 9/10
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