Raimi Returns to Roots with Tropical Terror as Rachel McAdams goes from Regina George to Bear Grylls, and it is a glorious, bloody mess.
Acclaimed horror maestro Sam Raimi makes his highly anticipated return to the genre that launched his career with Send Help, a dark and twisted survival thriller arriving on streaming platforms this week. Best known for creating the legendary Evil Dead franchise before migrating to massive studio blockbusters like the original Spider-Man trilogy, Raimi delivers a scaled-down, R-rated cinematic experience that balances visceral tension with his signature brand of pitch-black humor. The film focuses on a harrowing corporate business trip gone wrong, shifting the horror from supernatural entities to the raw, untamed forces of nature and the psychological degradation of the human mind.
The narrative centers on Linda Liddle, a dedicated but constantly overlooked corporate employee who travels abroad to assist her overbearing and arrogant young boss, Bradley Preston, the newly appointed CEO of their firm. When their commercial flight tragically crashes over the South Pacific, Linda and Bradley emerge as the sole survivors, marooned on an uncharted, deserted island with no rescue in sight. As they face the grueling realities of wilderness survival, the established office hierarchy completely fractures, giving way to a dangerous psychological battle of wills as the submissive employee unexpectedly finds herself holding all the leverage over her helpless superior.
Review by Ben Dover
I just sat through Send Help on my TV, and let me tell you, I could have used some actual help getting through some of his wacky choices. This movie is directed by Sam Raimi, a guy who used to make decent, gross movies back when people knew how to take a joke, before he got sucked into making those endless superhero movies for the kids today who can’t go five minutes without staring at their cell phones. He tries to get back to his roots here by putting two people on a deserted island after a plane crash, which honestly sounds like a vacation compared to dealing with the customer service line at my local grocery store.
The whole setup is about a corporate lady and her bratty, twenty-something trust-fund boss who looks like he has never done a hard day of work in his life. These kids today get appointed as CEOs just for knowing how to open a spreadsheet, but the minute they are dropped in the dirt, they cry like babies. Once the plane goes down, the power flips because the lady actually knows how to survive, mostly because she is obsessed with that old reality TV show Survivor. I suppose that passes for education these days. It is a funny enough gimmick for about twenty minutes, watching this arrogant punk realize he cannot fire a tree or delegate tasks to a wild boar.
But look, I am sixty years old, and I am tired of movies where people just lose their minds and start acting like complete lunatics for the sake of a plot twist. The lady starts out as this quiet mouse and suddenly turns into some kind of unhinged jungle dictator, making the kid crawl around and beg for water. It is supposed to be a dark comedy, but some of the transitions are bumpier than a dirt road in Arizona. One minute they are having a serious talk about their feelings, and the next minute somebody is getting puked on or a wild animal is getting its eye popped out. Pick a lane, Sam.
I will admit, it did keep me entertained enough to not turn it off, which is a miracle considering most modern garbage makes me want to throw my remote through the screen. It has that mean-spirited, old-school vibe where nobody is entirely a good guy, and I can appreciate a movie that does not try to lecture me about my societal footprint or whatever nonsense the youth are crying about this week. It is silly, it is gross, and it does not overstay its welcome. It is not a masterpiece, but if you want to watch a smug corporate millennial get put in his place by a woman who has had enough of his crap, you could do a lot worse on a Friday night.
The Stars
- Rachel McAdams plays Linda Liddle. You might remember her from those romantic movies your wife dragged you to see twenty years ago, but here she is completely unhinged. She goes from a crying corporate secretary to a terrifying island warlord, and she looks like she is having way too much fun being a psycho.
- Dylan O’Brien plays Bradley Preston, the obnoxious brat of a boss. He plays the part of an unlikable, privileged tech-bro so well that I spent half the movie hoping a shark would bite his leg off. He is funny, but he is the exact kind of kid I would tell to get off my lawn.
- Dennis Haysbert turns up briefly as the pilot. He has that deep, authoritative voice from those insurance commercials, so you naturally trust him, which makes it even funnier when the plane drops out of the sky like a stone.
Special Effects and Music
The special effects are a real mixed bag here, and frankly, some of it looks like total garbage. Raimi used to be the king of using real, practical fake blood and puppets, but here he relies way too much on that computer-generated crap. There is a wild boar in this movie that looks like it was drawn by a toddler on an iPad, and it completely ruins the tension. When the gore is real, it is great and delightfully yucky, but the digital stuff is embarrassing.
As for the music, it was done by Danny Elfman, a guy who usually writes tunes you can actually remember. This time around, the music is just sort of there in the background, making noise during the scary parts but leaving absolutely no impression. It is completely anonymous, which is a shame because a guy with a resume like his should be doing better than just collecting a paycheck.
Rating
4 out of 5 Stars
Complete Synopsis and Plot Breakdown
The movie opens in a sterile corporate office where Linda Liddle is treated like absolute garbage by her young, tech-obsessed boss, Bradley Preston. Bradley has just been handed the keys to the kingdom as the new CEO because his daddy probably owns the company, and he treats Linda like she is invisible, denying her a well-deserved promotion with a smug smile. To prove her worth, Linda has to tag along on a miserable corporate business trip to Bangkok to help close a massive foreign investment deal.
While flying over the South Pacific, the weather turns foul and the plane suffers a catastrophic mechanical failure. The crash sequence is incredibly intense, featuring passengers getting sucked out of the cabin and luggage flying everywhere. When the smoke clears, the plane is at the bottom of the ocean and the only two people who wash up on the shores of a remote, uncharted island are Linda and Bradley. Bradley immediately panics, screaming at his phone because there is no cellular service, while Linda uses her lifelong obsession with the reality show Survivor to start building a shelter and finding fresh water.
As the days turn into weeks, Bradley proves to be completely useless, unable to open a coconut or catch a fish without crying about his manicured hands. Linda realizes that without her, this punk would starve to death in forty-eight hours, and the power dynamic completely flips. Fed up with years of corporate humiliation, Linda decides to start treating Bradley the way he treated her in the office. She hoards the food, makes him do all the heavy lifting, and forces him to beg for basic necessities, turning the island into her own twisted corporate hierarchy.
The final act goes completely off the rails as survival turns into psychological warfare. Bradley tries to steal food and stage a mutiny, leading to a bloody, chaotic confrontation in the middle of a tropical storm. Linda tracks him through the jungle using improvised traps, culminating in a messy brawl where they both realize that revenge has not brought them liberation, it just turned them into monsters. The movie ends on a bleak, cynical note with both of them battered, bloody, and stuck together on the beach, realizing that they are trapped in a permanent workspace nightmare with no rescue in sight.
Famous Quotes
“There are no human resources out here, Bradley. I am the boss now.”
“I can’t eat wild berries, Linda, I have a strict gluten-free dietary restriction!”
“You spent ten years treating me like I didn’t exist, so don’t cry just because I’m making you earn your water.”
“Is that a wild boar or did the graphics card on this island just glitch out?”
“We are closing the deal right here, and your severance package is whatever scraps I leave by the fire.”
Interesting Facts
- Director Sam Raimi chose to cast Rachel McAdams as the lead because he enjoyed directing her in crazy horror sequences during their time together on the set of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
- The screenwriters, Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, are the same duo responsible for writing the cinematic masterpiece Freddy vs. Jason back in 2003.
- Despite being a mid-budget thriller released by a major studio, the film went on to become a massive global streaming hit, reaching the number one spot on the Apple TV charts.
- Many of the jungle survival tactics used by Rachel McAdams’ character were researched directly from early seasons of the reality television show Survivor.
- The film marks Sam Raimi’s first official R-rated directing gig in over a decade, bringing back the gory style of his early independent films.
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