When survival enthusiast Linda gets marooned on an island with her jerk of a boss, she realizes that her unique skillset could come in handy—both in staying alive and teaching her boss a lesson. Blood and gore pass for humor in this foul-mouthed, Sam Raimi revenge fantasy.
Linda Liddle is really good with numbers. Like, really good.
For the most part, everyone at Preston Strategic Solutions knows how valuable Linda is. The company couldn’t function without her. In fact, she’s all but been promised a promotion to vice president over Planning and Strategy once the current CEO retires and his son, Bradley Preston, takes over.
The problem is that Linda isn’t exactly what you’d call a “people person”—though not for lack of trying. Linda is friendly and funny. She’s always on time and never misses a deadline. Unfortunately, she’s also horribly, painfully awkward. She eats smelly tuna sandwiches at her desk. She inserts herself into conversations at the wrong moments. She’s obsessed with the TV show Survivor.
Which is why, on his first day in office, Bradley doesn’t give Linda the VP position: He gives it to Donovan Murphy.
Never mind the fact that Donovan has only been at the company for six months—or the fact that he’s been taking credit for Linda’s work ever since he arrived. Donovan is charming. He likes golf. And he was frat brothers with Bradley in college.
OK, so Bradley is a world-class jerk (and so is Donovan). But that’s not going to stop Linda. She’s going to prove how valuable she is. She’ll fly with Bradley and the other VPs to negotiate the details of the company’s upcoming merger. She’ll demonstrate just how incompetent Donovan is. She’ll show Bradley why his dad found her so dependable.
Or so she plans. But when their flight goes down somewhere in the middle of the ocean, Linda develops a new plan. She will use the skills she learned watching Survivor and reading survival guides to make sure she and Bradley (the only survivors) make it home alive.
Bradley is a jerk. But his fiancée seems like a genuinely nice person. When others give up on the search for their plane, she persists, hiring her own boat to navigate the islands surrounding the crash site. A few people try to save the lives of their fellow man.
In a dream sequence, Linda sees a woman crawling out of the ocean after presumably dying. The woman calls out to Linda and moves in an unnatural, bone-jerking way. She then springs up behind Linda as a decomposing zombie.
Linda suggests to Bradley that perhaps they were the only ones who survived the plane crash because it’s their destiny to be together.
On the island, Linda really comes into her own: Her limp, greasy hair flourishes in the sunlight and salt water. Her makeup-free skin—dull-looking under the fluorescent lights of Preston Solutions—practically glows. So when she catches a glimpse of herself in the reflection of a small pool, she can’t help but appreciate her own natural beauty.
But the film couldn’t just leave things there: Linda starts posing before the makeshift mirror. She rubs her hands over her body and starts to dance. She’s clothed, but her breast is partially exposed at one point. And the whole charade comes off as quite sensual.
Linda stares at Bradley as he’s bathing in the sea one morning, and we see his bare backside. Linda occasionally wears her underwear like a two-piece swimsuit, wearing a button-down shirt as a coverup. Bradley sometimes goes shirtless. Earlier in the film, a woman wearing an off-shoulder dress kisses her fiancé.
Linda has a crush on Bradley. And certain events cause her feelings to deepen: When Bradley saves Linda from falling off a cliff, they collapse on top of each other. Elsewhere, a storm soaks the pair. They take shelter in a cave and cuddle together for warmth. Their interactions can be, at times, quite flirty. And during a special dinner together, Linda unbuttons the top buttons of her shirt and puts a flower in her hair.
Now, surviving on a desert island isn’t exactly violent in and of itself, but battling the elements is exactly that: a battle. Linda puts her survival skills to the test, constructing a shelter, gathering water and scavenging for food. But several times throughout the film, storms sweep in to wash away her hard work.
Bradley, the only survivor besides Linda, would have died from exposure, thirst or starvation without Linda’s help. Most of the movie, he’s nursing an injured leg, which has been deeply cut from ankle to knee. (We see other cuts and bruises from the crash.)
Unfortunately, despite that knowledge, Linda and Bradley never really do see eye to eye. Bradley continues to bark out orders and threaten Linda’s career. So Linda uses her position to … hold Bradley hostage and teach him a lesson.
What follows is a different sort of fight for survival.
Bradley poisons Linda. Linda paralyzes Bradley (via octopus venom). While he’s unable to move, Linda removes his pants and underwear before tricking him into thinking she has castrated him in revenge for the poisoning—though it turns out she only guts a rat. Bradley nearly drowns. The two colleagues beat each other senseless in one fight scene. They take turns stabbing and choking, biting and scalping. At one point, a thumb is shoved into someone’s eye, nearly popping it out of the owner’s skull.
The Preston Strategic plane hits turbulence, tossing around unseated passengers like rag dolls. Then pressure rips off one of the plane’s wings. Two are sucked through a gaping hole in the fuselage (and one is slammed against the side of the plane repeatedly). One character tries to undo another person’s seatbelt, but he’s briefly interrupted when another careening passenger grabs onto his leg and bites him, forcing him to kick the guy off (in a shower of blood and dislodged teeth, no less). Donovan chokes Linda, who manages to save herself by stabbing him in the hand with fork. Another passenger reaches to his friend for help, but he’s slapped away.
The plane goes down, and Linda nearly drowns. (She’s frightened when someone’s body floats up next to her with a horrific grimace on his dead, battered face.)
One woman falls to her death after falling off a cliff. A man tries to help her, but he’s purposely hit over the head with a rock, sending them both to their deaths on the rocks below. And at least one other person dies before the film’s end.
While inebriated, Linda tells Bradley that she was married for several years but that her husband died. He was an alcoholic, she said, so she would hide his car keys whenever he had one too many drinks. However, he also wasn’t a nice person when he was drunk. And one night, she snapped. She gave him his car keys and poured him one last drink. And sure enough, he got into a wreck and died.
Bradley says that his mom was emotionally and physically abusive.
Linda hunts a boar on the island. The creature attacks Linda, but she manages to overpower it, stabbing it repeatedly with her carved spear—in the throat, the eye, the chest—as blood spurts everywhere. She later throws its decapitated head before Bradley, splattering him with blood, too. Elsewhere, a different boar gnaws on someone’s dismembered hand.
During a job interview, Bradley asks a potential new employee, “How far would you be willing to go above and beyond for me?” The way it’s framed feels predatory, but Linda interrupts the exchange, preventing things from going further. Later in the film, though, Linda more or less proves Bradley’s ill intentions. In a position of power, she asks Bradley the same question. And, catching her meaning, he hesitantly starts to remove his shirt. But Linda stops him, telling Bradley that she would never do that to someone because she’s not like him.
There are about 25 uses of the f-word and 15 of the s-word. We also hear uses of “a–hole,” “balls,” “b–ch,” “c–k,” “h—” and “p—y.” Middle fingers are raised in two separate instances. God’s name is misused about 10 times.
Linda ferments fruit on the island to make “toilet wine.” She and Bradley get drunk on the stuff one night. Earlier in the film, we see Linda drink wine alone at home.
Most kind actions and positive characteristics depicted in this film are pretty much negated by the end, since it’s revealed that just about everyone is acting out of selfish desire—or simply feigning niceness to get what they want. People lie almost nonstop.
Bradley is incredibly entitled and spoiled. Even as Linda is saving his life, he treats her like an employee, barking out demands. He clearly hires people based on appearance, not merit, which is why he passes Linda over for a promotion—calling Linda “disgusting.” He humiliates her in front of their colleagues on several occasions. Donovan does too, showing Bradley and another exec an audition tape that Linda submitted to Survivor. They mock the video profusely, while Linda, working quietly nearby, cries. And there’s a very strong “boys’ club” vibe from those guys.
Linda smashes a berry on her arm to determine if it’s poisonous—and it causes an instant allergic reaction. Later, she vomits profusely—mostly on Bradley’s face—after unknowingly ingesting several poisonous berries. Bradley coughs in Linda’s face. He gags while eating a fish that Linda cooked and refuses to eat more. But later, when he’s starving, he eats a bug, which turns his tongue black.
The flight that initially maroons Linda and Bradley is caused by a sudden storm. The flight attendant asks everyone to take their seats, but Bradley mocks her, telling his friends/colleagues that anyone who sits down is a coward (never mind that he’s already safely secured in his own seat).
Going into Sam Raimi’s Send Help, I didn’t have a whole lot of expectations. I knew it was probably going to be bloody, horror-adjacent and stupid.
I was correct on all accounts.
This film is quintessential revenge fantasy: Poor Linda gets horribly mistreated by her boss. She gets excluded from his boys’ club of execs. And even after saving his life, he still acts like he’s somehow superior to her. So she teaches him a lesson he’ll never forget … if he can survive.
The problem with that premise is that in order to make it happen, the main character usually has to stoop to the level of the person they’re targeting. And in this case, that standard was set particularly low.
Of course, Linda and Bradley each find ways to stoop even lower. It’s pretty incredible just how much this film tries to focus on their complete lack of character development, of empathy, of humanity itself.
So, what follows is a graphic gorefest played out, at times, for humor. Season with a bit of male nudity and foul language and, apparently, you’ve got a film.
All I can say to conclude is that if this is what folks are venturing into theaters to watch, then perhaps they should heed Linda’s advice: “No help is coming, so you better start saving yourself.”
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
