SEND HELP Review: Office Space Meets Evil Dead in Sam Raimi’s Bloody Satire

Raimi is Back, Baby!

Four years after helming Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, legendary genre director Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Spider-Man, Drag Me to Hell) returns to his comedy-horror roots with the exceedingly entertaining Send Help. 

Rachel McAdams stars as Linda Liddle, a hard-working yet somewhat socially awkward corporate strategist with aspirations to finally climb the corporate ladder. After being passed over for a promised promotion by the new CEO Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), the sleazy son of the company’s long-running leader, Liddle is set to finally abandon her aspirations. 

However, giving her job one last go, she joins Bradley and his crew of assembled corporate bros on a trip to Bangkok to help finalize an upcoming merger. That plan goes tails up when their plane is torn apart mid-flight, stranding Linda and Bradley on an island in the Gulf of Thailand. 

Thus begins a dangerous battle of wits between the two survivors as they each try to leverage their power over the other in increasingly brutal ways. 

As an avid Survivor fan and onetime hopeful contestant, Linda is able to gather food and set up shelter for the injured Bradley, who still attempts to treat her like a subservient underling. However, their relationship evolves quickly on the island, and the tables repeatedly turn as the duo battle for superiority in their new environment. 

Office Space Meets Evil Dead

Sam Raimi seems to be having a blast with this material, which combines the office satire of Office Space with the goofy, over-the-top violence of films like Evil Dead 2. This is a crowd-pleasing movie in every sense of the term, with laugh out loud gross out moments and enough twists and turns to keep audiences on their toes throughout. 

Rachel McAdams is great as the unpredictable lead, and Dylan O’Brien is aptly slimy as a corporate bro in over his head. Essentially a two-hander, the duo are in nearly every shot of the movie, and their constantly evolving relationship helps ground the wilder elements of the movie (and things do get wild). 

You can almost hear Raimi cackling with joy as characters get vomited on, have their eyes poked, and do battle with bloodthirsty boars. With Danny Elfman’s grand score, Send Help often feels like an updated take on a Hitchcock thriller, complete with modern workspace jargon. 

It’s a refreshingly volatile mix and marks a very welcome return for the iconic Sam Raimi, who proves he’s only gotten more gleefully sadistic with age. 

Send Help is in theatres now.