Send Help: Sam Raimi's Powerful Comeback

 

The best Sam Raimi is the one who stays away from franchises. The one who handles small projects with complete freedom and fully unleashes the darkest parts of his mind. That is the Sam Raimi of A Simple Plan, Drag Me to Hell, and Send Help. Three spectacular films. A Simple Plan stands at the level of the best from Tarantino and the Coens. Drag Me to Hell is my all time favorite horror movie. Send Help is a survival thriller and a fabulous black comedy at the same time.

Some will say Send Help is a horror film, and yes, it has some elements of that. I laughed a lot throughout the entire movie, just like what happened to me with Drag Me to Hell, which also made me laugh a lot. Raimi's humor does not ask for permission. Raimi is disturbing and funny. Curiously, the creative team behind Send Help is closer to the horror genre than to thrillers.

Send Help is also a survival movie, a subgenre that I love. Nowhere is fabulous, 127 Hours is impressive, and Fall is another gem. But Send Help is something else. It is not horror, it is not pure survival, and it is not comedy. It is a Sam Raimi movie, and that is a category in itself. The best Raimi films always move at a frantic pace, with one surprise after another, with one twist after another, and Rachel McAdams is the perfect actress for that speed.

McAdams is an amazing actress. Raimi felt he owed her after not using her fully in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so he made her the essential lead in his next film and finally gave her the chance to unleash all her talent without restraints.

The movie starts as a survival thriller. Linda Liddle, an efficient and overlooked corporate strategist, and Bradley Preston, the incompetent heir CEO, are the only survivors of a plane crash in the Gulf of Thailand. Up to that point it is survival. From there the film turns into pure Raimi, something more disturbing and more fun at the same time. Send Help is like one of those popular self help books for overnight success and personal growth, but one that comes from a pretty twisted mind.

McAdams's transformation from victim to executioner happens in just a few minutes and it is fascinating to watch it unfold. One might think of Ugly Betty, Cast Away, Misery, and Lord of the Flies, all filtered through the unsettling mind of a director who loves pushing his characters to the limit, watching them suffer impossible situations, and then observing their wild and unexpected reactions when their morals shatter after making bad decisions. All that made Raimi perfect for directing the Spider-Man films and putting Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker through tough times.

Send Help is an extraordinary film, with many elements working on several levels at once. A delirious orchestra masterfully directed by Raimi, all without letting go for a single second of body horror, spurts of blood, and situations that make you laugh while your stomach twists. That is Raimi. That is Send Help and in the end it makes very clear what all of us who have followed Raimi's cinema know better than anyone: "No one is coming to save you."