Film review: Send Help

Send Help gets off to a good start early on: a bunch of business bro dickheads who didn’t understand American Psycho get sucked out of a plane and killed. One of them has the double indignity of getting caught as he’s flying out the door and hanged. As these pricks literally fight one another to cling on, after being too brodacious to listen to the warning to get into a seat as turbulence hits, one of them kicks a whole load of teeth out of another’s face.

This happens about 15 minutes into Evil Dead/Spider-Man director Sam Raimi’s survival horror, by which time you’re already calling for their heads. This gang of office horrors, led by Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), son of the company’s late boss, have been making life hard for diligent and brilliant but plain frump Laura Liddle (Rachel McAdams). Not least by taking credit for her work, despite having very little idea of how anything there actually works.

They end up taking the company jet to Bangkok, where they’ll pull off a huge deal which, again, only Laura understands the workings of, to absolutely no gratitude. In fact, thanks to one of them finding her audition tape for Survivor, they’re having a good laugh at her expense on the flight. Joke’s on them. When the plane goes down and she and Bradley are the only survivors to wash up on a desert island, it turns out she really knows what she’s doing here as well, and the scales of power are not so much tipped as turned upside-down.

Their story is told with a of darkest comedy, sinister horror, thriller tension and explosive boar gore as Laura has a go at hunting and develops a taste for it. On the island, Sam Raimi’s skill with sickness gets a proper playground. There’s a really great bit of disgustingly pukey mouth-to-mouth resuscitation that you can practically smell. Frequently, the violence goes from comic to dangerous in the flash of a knife.

She takes to the new life brilliantly, actively enjoying being cut off from the misery of reality and being catered for by the provisions of their new home. She makes shelter, fashions a very fetching hat from palm leaves, and becomes a wizard at whipping up amazing-looking sushi and pork. She doesn’t actually want to leave.

For Bradley, even seriously injured and quite literally owing his colleague his life, it’s a situation to manage his way out of, except he can’t yell at or micro-manage the violence of nature, much to Laura’s amusement. He is a shit frontiersman. When he tries to use his bullying office tactics on her, he gets a swift reminder that his money’s no good here.

He’s such a tosser that you laugh at every misfortune that comes his way. He is the acme of twats so full of cash and hubris that even narrowly avoiding death is just confirmation of how brilliant they are. When he tries to do Laura over by poisoning her and fleeing on a poorly-made and ultimately useless raft, he gets what he deserves before Laura once again rescues him.

But soon this tale of deserved revenge turns into a parable about the nature of power, and of becoming the thing that you hate. Laura’s desire to stay on the island rather than be rescued sees her becoming a desert island Annie Wilkes from Misery, both provider and prison warden. He’s a wanker – he keeps going on about golf, your honour – but his rap sheet is nowhere near as cruel as what the heroine becomes, whether she likes it or not. And still you root for her.

The Porridge-ish two-people-stuck-in-a-situation is used to great effect for both the LOLZ and the madness. And it actually looks relatively pleasant eating fruit in the sun without the internet. As tense as it is gross as it is funny, Send Help a macabrely fun two hours. Unless you’re a boss who doesn’t shut up about golf.

Verdict: 3/5

Send Help is in cinemas now via 20th Century Studios