Send Help
Director: Sam Raimi
Writer: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail, Dennis Haysbert, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Thaneth Warakulnukroh
Seen on: 7.2.2026

Plot:
Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is working her ass off at her company but socially, she is not as competent. Still, with the change of leadership at her company to the former owner’s son Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), she was promised a promotion. Instead of that promotion, though, Preston would rather get rid of her – but only after she helps to finalize a deal in Hong Kong. On the way there, their company plane crashes and the only survivors are Preston and Linda – and Linda sees her chance to finally prove her worth to him.

Send Help was fun for a long while, then it kind of got derailed into a sexist stereotype that marred the movie for me.

I really liked the premise of the movie (it reminded me of Glass Houses a little, though the film and book then go in completely different directions): the wronged woman who uses this catastrophic but somehow golden opportunity to teach her incompetent, shallow boss her worth, and takes a bit of revenge along the way? Count me in.

The way women like Linda get (ab)used at work and never really stand a chance of entering the inner circle – not male enough, not pretty enough (though it is weird to write that about Rachel McAdams, but the costume department did their best) and not knowledgeable enough about patriarchal workplace rules to play the game correctly – is perfectly shown in the first part of the film, albeit in a slightly exaggerated way. This is a comedy above all.

But the longer things go on at the island, the less the movie seemed to know what to actually do with Linda. What would a win for Linda look like? Do we even want her to win? And they do manage to get her a win (yay, she gets to participate in patriarchy), but before that, they turn her so completely unhinged that it plays more into sexist stereotypes than I could really like. It almost made me pity Preston. Almost. (But it is more about two other characters who get caught up in Linda’s delusions.)

Still, for the longest time the movie really is a whole lot of fun. McAdams and O’Brien have great chemistry and make excellent enemies. And it feels like McAdams had a whole lot of fun on set – and that is definitely fun to watch. I would have just liked to have a better ending.

Summarizing: mostly entertaining, though not entirely.