Almost Paradise
Workplace revenge thriller? Desert island rom-com? Anti-feminist screed? Gonzo gorefest? Try: All of the above.
Send Help
Director: Sam Raimi • Writers: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift
Starring: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien
USA • 1hr 53mins
Opens Hong Kong January 29 • IIB
Grade: B
In they way director Timur Bekmambetov totally did not read the room with his pro-AI copaganda thriller Mercy last week, Sam Raimi totally did, which is why he’s dropping his first film in four years (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness landed in 2022) and the first truly Raimi film in over a decade (Drag Me to Hell came out in 2009) in Send Help. Ostensibly a labour first workplace comedy-thriller that morphs into a survival thriller in which the proletariat gets a chance to make management suck it, the film is also an effective two-hander chamber piece about the persistent glass ceiling, our collective performative civility and what happens when those civil parameters are eliminated and human nature is allowed free rein. When mousy, under-appreciated, cog that makes the machine go, metaphorically named Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) crashes on a desert island with her C-suite douchebro boss Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), it’s her chance to prove herself to him and to the gods of capitalism that he ain’t shit without her. Pay attention, Bezos.
But there’s something sinister and muddled in here as well, something that prevents it from nestling alongside Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness and A Simple Plan as Raimi’s best, aside form sagging a bit in the middle. Despite the delightful schadenfreude of Bradley having the tables turned on him, there’s a disturbing “bitches be crazy” undercurrent in Linda’s story and a backwards-looking message about working women that I’m not sure the schlock writers of Freddy vs. Jason, the (actually not terrible) remake of Friday the 13th and Baywatch – those being Damian Shannon and Mark Swift – fully intended. Or maybe they did. I’m going to say unintended.
We meet Linda Liddle from Planning & Strategy (that’s important… maybe) just as the Patrick Bateman-lite Bradley is set to take over as the new CEO of the giant consulting company he’ll be running and that his father built. “Consulting” of course is movie shorthand for the McKinsey style purveyors of bullshit “streamlining” and “growth acceleration” that do very little and charge very much. It makes it crystal clear that Bradley (they’re always Bradley) is an entitled dick. Linda, however, thinks he’s handsome but more importantly is convinced she’ll be in the office right beside him once she’s bumped to VP, something the deceased Preston promised her and which she’s earned in her seven years at the company. Bradley decides he wants his idiot college bestie Donovan (who takes all the credit for Linda’s work) to have the job, against the advice of upper management and his father’s wishes. When Linda finds out, she’s rightfully crushed.
Raimi establishes the base dynamics of the concept with efficient ultra-closeups and clinical wide shots that illustrate the icy, regimented office spaces Linda inhabits; it looks straight out of the 1980s rather than the co-working chic of the 2000s. Her cubicle is as anonymous and impersonal as it gets, and she only stands out thanks to her frumpy, ill-fitting outfits and practical footwear. Of course, she’s Rachel McAdams, so her frumpiness and homeliness is relative, and it has to be an actor like her so that her island transformation is complete, the office satire pops and the wish fulfilment goes down easy.
But Raimi and Co are just getting started. First we get to see why Linda is far from the perfect person for the VP job. Her work is great, but she’s awkward and makes people uncomfortable, never knowing when to be quiet and that her jokes aren’t funny. Worst of all she’s fond of tuna which the rest of the office is not – especially Bradley. As a way to appease her and probably avoid a wrongful dismissal lawsuit, Bradley invites Linda to the merger meetings for their Bangkok office, and then finds himself at her mercy after their jet crashes in the Gulf of Thailand. Let the games begin. It’s a deliciously nasty idea, and one that Raimi leans into quite brilliantly for a while. Bradley’s slow realisation that the office hierarchy he relies on is gone is delightful, as is Linda finding her groove as her Survivor obsession pays off. The script ingeniously and repeatedly swaps out hero and villain status, as the humiliations and micro-aggressions Linda suffers early on are refocused onto Bradley, forcing us to recalibrate our sympathies and allegiances. Send Help is pure Raimi in its low-angle creature chases, Looney Tunes gore like Linda’s boar hunt, flashes of horror and one of the greatest vomit gags since Triangle of Sadness, whose shadow looms large here. The requisite hints baked into desert island thrillers are here – ominous jungle, poisonous berries, unstable cliffsides – and anyone who finds the Act III “twist” a bridge too far has never been to Thailand.
But it’s hard to get past the story’s clumsy (at best) or retrograde (at worst) gender politics. As Linda comes into herself and starts taking revenge on Bradley it’s hard not to see it as a cautionary tale for women considering an outside job. Look what it will do to you! Either that or hey, Wall Street and Central are full of sociopaths, what are we gonna do? (That may not be far off.) At the very least it reduces the film to a story about two assholes being mean to each other, to which we can all say “Have at it.” Send Help ultimately leaves the stomach queasy, but its murky finish has absolutely nothing at all to do with either O’Brien (no, go check him out in Twinless) or an all-in McAdams (it’s her story), as both deliver nimble performances that demand they turn on a dime but maintain a consistently high level of dark comedy. Because no matter the lasting impression, Send Help is never less than a giddy good time in the moment.