SEND HELP Looks Like Twisted Survival Horror, But Sam Raimi is Doing Something Far Meaner

Sam Raimi’s return to horror with Send Help delivers a survival thriller that keeps its feet planted firmly in reality. But, this movie is every bit as fun and twisted as you’d expect from the filmmaker who gave us The Evil Dead. It just hides its teeth behind character drama, power games, and some wildly uncomfortable laughs.

Send Help stars Rachel McAdams as Linda Liddle, an executive assistant stuck on a work trip from hell with her abusive new boss, Bradley Preston, played by Dylan O’Brien.

When their plane crashes and strands them on a deserted island, the film sets up what feels like a familiar survival story. Two coworkers who can’t stand each other now have to cooperate or die. Simple enough. Except Raimi and writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift have something much messier in mind.

The ending of the film is where everything snaps into focus.

After weeks of surviving together, things finally implode when Bradley finds the bodies of his fiancée Zuri and her guide. He quickly pieces together the truth and realizes Linda killed them.

That revelation ignites a brutal, over-the-top showdown between the two that feels equal parts horrifying and darkly funny, very much in Raimi’s wheelhouse. The fight spills across the island until Bradley flees toward an area Linda warned him about earlier, supposedly thick with vines and poisonous plants.

That warning turns out to be a lie.

Instead of danger, Bradley stumbles onto a fully stocked mansion. Linda discovered it earlier in the film after spotting the first boat offshore. It’s a vacation home belonging to some wealthy person, and Linda had already been quietly raiding it for supplies.

The knife she’s been using all along came from here. She chose not to tell Bradley any of this, feeding him a story about deadly terrain so she could keep control of the situation.

Linda shows up soon after, calmly explaining the truth while watching Bradley panic through the mansion’s security cameras. When she finally confronts him face to face, she’s holding a shotgun.

Bradley apologizes and, for a moment, it almost feels genuine. It seems like Linda is buying into it, then she notices a horn is missing from one of the house’s decorative pieces and she realizes he’s going to attack her. The apology was just another move.

The fight turns physical again. Bradley disarms her, but Linda ultimately wins, smashing him in the face with a golf club. As she raises it for the final blow, the film cuts forward in time.

Linda is back in civilization, alive and thriving, playing in a celebrity golf tournament. She’s now famous for her story about surviving the crash alone and escaping the island on a raft. The world believes she was the sole survivor. Bradley’s existence has been erased, and Linda makes sure the truth stays buried.

That ending only lands because of what the film quietly reveals earlier.

Not long before the climax, another boat reaches the island. This time it’s Zuri and her guide, actively searching for Bradley. Linda meets them and offers to lead them across the island.

On the way, they reach a narrow mountain path where Linda herself nearly fell earlier in the movie. Zuri slips and clings to the edge while the guide grabs her. Both beg Linda for help. The film cuts away before showing what happens.

Later, a flashback fills in the gap. Linda smashed the guides head with a rock. Both he and Zuri fell to their deaths.

That moment redefines everything. Linda didn’t kill out of panic or self-defense. She made a choice.

Before the crash, Linda saw herself as powerless. At work she was dismissed, talked down to, and treated like a joke. At home, she had nothing resembling control. The island flips that dynamic completely.

Linda’s survival skills make her more capable than Bradley, and for the first time in her life, she holds the power. She’s good at it too. She thrives, and she doesn’t want to give it up.

Zuri’s arrival threatens to end that new reality. Rescue would mean returning to the same life Linda escaped. So she removes the problem.

The first half of Send Help sells a pretty clear moral setup. Bradley is awful. Linda is the victim. That imbalance carries over to the island, where Bradley remains selfish, sexist, and cruel. But as Linda gains control, the film starts to tilt.

She becomes manipulative. She withholds information. She threatens Bradley physically. She keeps secrets about the boats and the mansion. And ultimately, she kills to preserve her status.

At the same time, the film never lets either character become a cartoon villain. Linda is sympathetic because of what she endured before the crash. Bradley, surprisingly, opens up about his own damaged upbringing and admits he hates the person he’s become.

For a stretch in the middle of the movie, they even seem to care about each other in a genuine way, which makes their downfall hit harder.

That’s the point. Send Help isn’t interested in handing you a clean hero and villain. Both Linda and Bradley take their pain and use it to justify horrific choices. Their dynamic is the engine of the movie, and it’s what gives the ending its bite.

Underneath the jokes and gore, Raimi is telling a story about how monsters are made, not born. Linda even says it outright after Bradley talks about his childhood. Then the film shows it happening in real time.

Linda starts as a normal, beaten-down person and slowly transforms into something far more dangerous once power is placed in her hands.

The other idea running through the film is just as uncomfortable. Power doesn’t just corrupt. It clings. The island is a stand-in for the workplace, with one crucial difference. The hierarchy is reversed.

When Linda gains authority, she does everything she can to keep it. She lies. She manipulates. She kills. And when escape means losing control, she chooses to eliminate the person she controls instead.

The final irony cuts deep. Linda survives by using Bradley’s raft idea. It directly mirrors how one of her bosses stole her work earlier in the film. She becomes the very thing she once despised, and the world rewards her for it.

That’s what makes Send Help stick with you. It’s funny, ugly, and uncomfortable. Shannon and Swift use Linda and Bradley to explore how systems of power shape behavior, and Raimi wraps it all in a survival thriller that feels lean, nasty, and surprisingly thoughtful.