Self-Help: Movie Review of Send Help
★★★1/2
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Submitted for your approval. A young man and woman are stranded on a beautiful desert island and work together to eke out the means for survival in a harsh unforgiving and hostile environment. The woman nurtures the man through a serious injury until he is cured. Together, they fight storms, gather food, and grow closer through their common struggle. Sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?
This conceit sounds like the perfect recipe for “close proximity” desert island romantic comedies like Swept Away, Six Days, Seven Nights, and even the syrupy Blue Lagoon, but in the hands of Sam Raimi and screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, the film Send Help expands that desert island rom-com trope into a horror thriller laced with dashes of humor and a strong helping of critical swipes at toxic masculinity and chronic misogyny in corporate culture. It is more than anything else a commentary on power and control.
Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams), a geeky and corporate strategist, is looking forward to an overdue promotion at her job promised to her by the CEO who has just passed away. His son and new CEO, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) passes over Linda and instead appoints Donovan (Xavier Samuel) an old frat buddy, to the position, but promises Linda a chance to redeem herself by accompanying himself and Donovan on a business trip to Bangkok. During the flight, Donovan and the boys make fun of Liddle’s audition tape for the television show survivor.
The plane runs into trouble and crashes into the sea. Linda finds herself washed up on a beach and discovers and unconscious Bradley also washed up. Relying on her survival skills, she quickly constructs a camp, discovers a water source, finds food, and nurses Bradley. When he awakens, true to form, he begins to complain about her work and berate her for not doing enough to get them help. Linda informs him they’re no longer in the office. When he demands she do more, she leaves him.
Immobilized by his injuries and not knowing any survival skills, he languishes with thirst. After two days, Linda returns, and he reluctantly accepts her authority. Because of the survival skills she studied for her Survivor audition, Linda proves to be adept at catching fish. She even manages to spear a wild boar, whose head she deposits at Bradley’s feet (shades of Lord of the Flies). During her explorations of the island, she spots a boat but avoids signaling.
One night, while drinking homemade wine, Linda tells Bradley about her abusive husband and how he died. Bradley in turn tells her about his dysfunctional family. Linda teaches Bradley survival skills, and he seems grateful to her, even to the point of offering to cook her dinner but poisons her food in order to make an escape attempt on a raft he built. The raft rapidly falls apart.
The next day, Linda fixes Bradley an octopus dish which paralyzes him, rendering him helpless. She tells him she is going to “fix” him by castrating him—a ploy to frighten and assert control over him. Afterwards, Bradley seems cowed and complacent.
As she continues to explore the island, Linda is spotted by Bradley’s fiancée Zuri (Edyll Ismail) who has never stopped searching for him. Knowing her presence complicates Linda’s desire to maintain the status quo between her and Bradley on the island, Linda is forced to take action. Tensions between Linda and Bradley escalate until they culminate in a violent and—ultimately—stunningly unexpected conclusion.
Within the parameters of the desert island rom-com, Raimi constructs an entirely new and unexpected take on this trope. Overlaying a power struggle—with more than a passing nod to Lord of the Flies—and including a scathing examination of masculine corporate culture and cringe-worthy elements of body horror and violence, Raimi has constructed an engaging and entertaining film with sharp satiric teeth, much like the other recent horror films Death of a Unicorn and Companion—especially with this production’s examination of the objectification and subjugation of women.
The power struggle on the island encapsulates corporate power, toxic masculinity, and a weird sort of sexual tension—mostly on Linda’s part. Her desire to stay on the island where, as opposed to her life on the outside, she is not only useful and productive, but indispensable, although she must constantly struggle—albeit unsuccessfully—to be appreciated.
Linda’s (to be generous) dowdy, frumpy, clueless, friendless, unappreciated, and pathetic existence in the outside world is nothing she wants to return to, so she does everything in her power to maintain the status quo. There are snippets in the film that imply her awakening sexuality and awareness of her own attractiveness, which is—of course—never recognized by Bradley.
Like the antagonist Jack in Lord of the Flies, Linda has discovered a world she can control and dominate. From her excited discovery of a conch, the killing and decapitation of the boar, and her soft cooing of, “here, piggy, piggy, piggy” during the hunt echo the growing power of primitivism and bestiality. Like Jack, she will do anything to keep and consolidate her power.
Bradley is even less of an appealing character than Linda. The viewer might find her newfound opportunities to control her life—and Bradley—laudable, and her determination to do so understandable, but Bradley’s consistently deceitful and selfish refusal to acknowledge Linda’s generosity and kindness is despicable. He is, was, and always will be misogynistic, cruel, and narcissistic. The sequences where Bradley is reduced to the pouting, tantrums, and whinings of a little boy are priceless, underlining the weaknesses and insecurities cowering beneath his corporate armor. The other sequences where he begins howling in frustration and screaming like an animal, emphasizing his deepest layer of inhumanity.
So, instead of the young, shipwrecked couple learning to appreciate each other and falling in love, Send Helpexamines the caustic power struggles of two people whose worlds have been turned upside down. In this particular aspect, Send Help echoes the thematic elements of Triangle of Sadness, another desert island film that examines the intricacies of power and control in a world without rules.
There is a fair amount of body horror and splatter in this film. To my eye, while some of it seems unnecessary and even juvenile, it does underline the disgusting nastiness inside both these characters. Again, there is an echo of this sort of externalize emotional excrement in Triangle of Sadness.
This is Rachel McAdam’s movie. She does a superb job transforming from a mousy and pathetic shadow into an assertive, knowledgeable woman able to master the wild jungle. While the sexual tension between the two is only hinted at, Linda’s attractiveness and sexuality blooms alongside her rise in status. Her early earnestness is overshadowed by her giddiness and then her ruthlessness as she fights to maintain and preserve her identity.
Dylan O’Brien’s portrayal of Bradley ping pongs wonderfully between a caustic bully to a sniveling weenie. He hits the perfect tone.
Send Help is a wild thrill ride showcasing not only Sam Raimi’s penchant for horror and gooey body gore, but a subtext that penetrates deeply into the darker side of human nature, self-sufficiency, and the extremes we are willing to go in order to survive, physically, emotionally, and psychologically.
This is a complex and deelpy-layered film that is both entertaining and penetrating. It most definitely worth seeing.
Comments