Send Help: A Darkly Comic Survival Tale on a Desert Island
Rachel McAdams faces off with Dylan O’Brien in a desert-island black comedy that doubles as a razor-edged horror show. What begins as a petty corporate feud quickly devolves into a battle for survival, with the island turning from backdrop to antagonist as the two players reveal their true natures.
Director Sam Raimi re-enters horror territory with a ferocious gusto, marking his full return to the genre since 2009’s Drag Me to Hell. The film leans into Raimi’s trademark inventive energy, delivering a punchy, zippy tone that keeps the momentum high from splash page to final frame.
In a four-star reception from critics, Send Help was hailed as a riot from start to finish, a tonal tightrope walk that marries dark humor with brutal set pieces. The blend lands with a confident snap, even as it dives into more nauseating turns as the plot unfolds.
! [sam-raimi](/sam-raimi.jpg) Spoilers ahead: the climax arrives with a deliberately cruel payoff that tightens the screws on what the movie has been hinting at since Linda Liddle’s arrival on the island.
Linda Liddle, a downtrodden office worker, is played with sly resilience by McAdams, while Bradley Preston, her merciless boss, is brought to life by O’Brien. The inciting insult—Linda being passed over for a promised promotion and dragged on a merger trip to Bangkok—sets the stage for a descent into a game with life-or-death stakes. A plane crash strands them on a seemingly deserted island, flipping the power dynamics in an instant.
As the fresh dynamic takes shape, Linda’s practical skills begin to outpace Bradley’s bravado. But the film complicates her moral compass: what appears to be a victim’s arc hides a more manipulative, darker side that surfaces as the story progresses. A series of near escapes and shocking moves reveal Linda’s willingness to stay the course on the island, not to be rescued but to reshape the situation in her favor.
The tension escalates when Bradley’s fiancée is found—dead in a shocking turn—and Linda’s secretive choices come into sharper relief. The pair inch toward a corridor of inevitability: a house on the far side of the island, stocked with supplies, becomes a symbol of Linda’s calculated patience and Bradley’s mounting desperation. What begins as a feud spirals into a fight to the death, with Linda delivering a final, brutal blow using a golf club.
The twist lands with savage irony. Linda’s knockout moment comes just as Bradley has been crowing about a promotion lost to one of his golfing buddies; he even taunts Linda that she’ll never make it because she doesn’t play the sport. The climactic sequence then cuts to a markedly lighter beat—the golf tournament montage—shifting tone from grisly close-quarters combat to a satirical, almost celebratory finish.
The film doesn’t end on grim tragedy alone. Linda’s arc pivots toward public life: she becomes a media figure, writing about her island ordeal, which is fast-tracked into a movie adaptation. The result is a gleefully twisted happy ending that keeps the central joke alive while offering a gleaming, sickly-sweet sense of vindication.
Send Help lands in cinemas now. If you’re craving more scares, check out our picks for the best horror movies of all time, or peek at the most anticipated horror releases of 2026.