Send Help

As much as I’ve admired McAdams’ work through the years, she gives what just might be the best performance of her career in Sam Raimi’s fantastically gory, darkly funny, and twist-filled “Send Help.” This is one of the most entertaining films I’ve seen in recent years—a desert island survival tale that plays like a warped mash-up of “Swept Away,” “Six Days, Seven Nights,” and “Triangle of Sadness.” The screenplay by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift is sharp and funny, and contains knowing insights about misogyny in the workplace and the shifting dynamic between a toxic male boss and an overlooked and mistreated female employee. Mostly, though, “Send Help” is about paying your ticket for an R-rated, Sam Raimi thrill ride with projectile vomiting, flying ropes of blood, and a handful of scenes that fly so off the rails that you wonder if we’re in the middle of a dream sequence, or the mayhem is real.

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Send Help doesn’t deliver on its considerable promise. It pulls punches that a younger Raimi wouldn’t have (castration? just do it, Sam, c’mon), and while there’s plenty of punishment, up to and including spiteful cannibalism, I confess I wanted more. More catharsis, more of this man being turned into a hamburger patty by a small woman who’s actually read a book. The plane crash itself is a marvellous set-piece. There’s some good hay made from the reversal of fortunes, i.e., corporate jungle to actual jungle, and Raimi milks some decent laughs from Linda’s survivalist instincts and Bradley’s uselessness. But it’s not enough. There are a couple of signature Sam Raimi camera moves, something he even managed to sneak into the low-key morality play A Simple Plan, though there is almost none of that film’s existential despair. There’s none of the delicate character-building that might have elevated this EC Comics head-hammering into a more elegantly barbed social satire. When the final twist reveals that Linda may not be entirely justified in the extent of her vengeance, it’s flaccid, off-key, and abandoned swiftly with little explanation. What should be the explosive moment of collective ecstasy is the definition of anti-climax and, ultimately, pandering.