Sam Raimi (finally) returns to (sorta) horror having apparently watched a lot of reality telly in the meantime
It’s been 17 long years since Sam Raimi’s last horror film, the gleefully anarchic and gross Drag me to Hell, widely seen as a return to the form of his Bruce-torturing Evil Dead days after a ton of more commercial, if not always successful, fare – I doubt anyone’s allowed to mention Spider-Man 3 within earshot. Since then, he’s been fairly quiet (though IMDB inadvertently implies he co-wrote a Xena smut flick in 2012), so I guess Send Help is some kind of return to return to form.
I went into Send Help knowing absolutely nothing about the film at all, having somehow managed to dodge trailers and spoilers, which is exactly how you should go into it (so stop reading now and come back after you’ve seen it. It’s great fun, promise).
Assuming you came back and I’m not talking to myself now, Send Help starts on that hackneyed US office comedy trope of the hardworking and talented employee who fails to get the expected promotion from the new boss because they’re not pretty or connected enough. In this case it’s Rachel McAdams, desperately trying to make herself look anything but the starlet she is with layers of bad clothes, greasy hair, padding and tuna mayo, taking on the hapless title role of Linda Liddle.
But rather than staying down on the cubicle farm, Linda’s new boss, played with eminently punchable rich boy smugness by Dylan O’Brien (who was also enjoyably smug and punchable in The Outfit) decides to fly her off on a business trip to Thailand, to exploit her business skills before getting rid of her.
At this point I, who knew nothing, was wondering if we were in for some sort of Bangkok Evil Dead (which I would have been totally there for), but that thought was as brief as the flight itself, before the plane plummeted into the sea in a flurry of trademark Raimi slapstick gore.
Naturally the only two to bob to the surface are Linda and her boss. This is lucky for him as it’s already been heftily foreshadowed that not only is she a survivor, but she wants to be the Survivor, and has been in obsessive training for the show, and soon puts those skills into practice as he lies on the beach, whinging.
Send Help keeps its cards very close to its chest as to where it’s going, at various points hinting it’s going to be a role-reversed Castaway (no, not that one), a tropical War of the Roses, a pocket-sized Razorback (the wild boar scene is timeless Rami – also, watch Razorback, it’s Jaws on the outback!) or Evil Dead on sea. It dabbles with all of these, but then goes off in a different but no less satisfyingly twisted direction.
It isn’t without its faults – the expected fast Raimi pace drops off a bit as the film figures out what it wants to be when it grows up, before deciding it doesn’t need to. Plus he occasionally seems a little uncomfortable directing complex relationship drama where no one’s swallowed an eyeball for ten minutes, so it sometimes comes across like he wants you to feel certain ways that the characters haven’t earnt yet. Plus there’s a whole lot of hand-waving to keep the story moving – where did all those fish come from? But then you don’t watch a Raimi movie for the continuity, do you?
The two central performances are great fun. McAdams once again reminds of her versatility, with the effortless ability to do vulnerable, intense, funny and scary (occasionally in the same sentence) and excellent comic timing, while O’Brien finds new things to do with the slimy yuppie archetype, and pulls some truly impressive faces while doing so.
While not quite up to the horror comedy lunacy of Drag me to Hell, Send Help is never less than a pleasure to watch, and it’s just nice to watch Raimi making extreme violence funny all over again.
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