Sam Raimi has used the venerable genre of the desert island scenario to discuss modern socio-political tensions in 2026's Send Help. He does so in a way more complicated than you might expect and it's a film refreshingly free of sympathetic characters. It's basically a cage match between two of the worst examples of both sides of the aisle. It really put a smile on my face.
When Linda (Rachel McAdams) complains about the the systemic sexism that led to her getting passed over for the promotion to vice president she'd long ago been promised, her coworker, another woman, barely seems to listen and kind of shrugs. Another coworker comes by talking about karaoke and Linda tries to invite herself along. Her coworkers awkwardly end the conversation.
Linda's new boss, Bradley (Dylan O'Brien), makes crude jokes about Linda behind her back. He's a spoiled young dick but when he says to her she lacks the people skills a vice president needs he's clearly right. This kicks off a see-saw series of escalating extremes. In one scene, Bradley or Linda does something obnoxious or psychotic that you would think clearly establishes them as the villain and then, in the next scene, the other character does something even worse. Raimi matches this lack of a moral centre with the delirious, cartoonish style he's famous for. Some people complained about the obvious cgi of the boars Linda hunts on the island but the complaints miss the point. These boars are far more expressive than real boars would be because they fit the extreme, stylistic tone of the film. They're more like Deadites than animals.
On the island, Linda has the edge on Bradley because she'd trained and studied in the hopes of becoming a contestant on Survivor. We know this because Bradley and his bros are seen laughing at her audition video on the plane. Bradley gets his comeuppance when he clearly lacks any of the survival skills necessary to get by on the island. Yet he still acts like he's God's gift to Linda. One exchange of dialogue I particularly like is when she points out he'd be dead if not for her and he replies smugly, "Yeah, and then where would you be?" causing her to ask with real consternation, "What does that even mean?" He never seems to realise that what he said was nonsense. Meanwhile, Linda starts to take on a resemblance to Kathy Bates in Misery.
Send Help is available on Hulu in the US.
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