‘Send Help’ a Sage but Savage Revenge Fantasy

You might not think a movie that uses gore-comedy as a device to make its point has much merit as far as life wisdom goes, but Send Help is surprisingly sage.

Key points:

It’s not a movie for kids or the weak-stomached but is an outlet for anyone who’s ever felt unheard or underestimated.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a Survivor-loving mid-level corporate employee, whose newly appointed tech-bro-esque boss Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) dismisses a promise to make her Vice President and promotes his similarly insufferable chum Donovan (Xavier Samuel) instead.

On a trip to Bangkok (masked as being for business but really about boys feeling self-important on a private plane), their jet goes down and Linda and Bradley become sole survivors on a deserted island in the Gulf of Thailand.

Thus begins a reestablishing of the power balance between the two, and it’s captivating.

Linda assumes the duty of hunter-gatherer while Bradley lies injured, getting water, making shelter, using all the skills her deep dedication to Survivor has taught her. Bradley’s understandably prickly with the renegotiation, especially realising he has to rely on a woman he’s mocked and belittled in order to live.

Director Sam Raimi’s approach to filmmaking is visceral. There’s an animalistic nature to the need to survive that translates into wild boar blood splattering all over on Linda and bug guts spurting when Bradley’s desperation for a meal goes awry. It sounds minimal, but you’ll want to wipe your face.

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Send Help isn’t trying to be an example of virtuous living, but it sure provides food for thought when we consider how to handle revenge and what we rely on for support.

Much could be said about the social nuances Send Help captures, but one of its strongest threads is about self-sufficiency and how we treat people “we don’t need”.

Bradley is a jerk. He’s a jerk because his dad owned the company and no one’s suggested he act otherwise. Positioning him against Christ’s encouragement to care for “the least of these (Matthew 25:40 [NIV])” and to “do to others as you would have them do to you (Luke 6:31 [NIV])” he’s a dramatic lesson in pride coming before the fall.

Linda finds security in self-sufficiency. Her skills aren’t celebrated, they’re abused, and it drives her desire for revenge and the hopelessness that help will ever come. She runs the gauntlet between both sides of Romans 12:19-21’s instruction not to “avenge ourselves” because “vengeance is [the Lord’s] and [He] will repay”, and “heaping coals of fire on [her enemies] head” by giving him food and water. Oh, and she’s definitely forgotten that “help comes from the Lord (Psalm 121:2 [ESV])”.

Send Help isn’t trying to be an example of virtuous living, but it sure provides food for thought when we consider how to handle revenge and what we rely on for support.

Dylan O’Brien and Rachel McAdams are masterfully cast with Dylan embodying a soft-handed CEO with just the right amount of likeability to elicit empathy, and Rachel has a blast getting to be gritty and unhinged.

Send Help requires discretion and is for mature audiences only. Rated MA15+.

Feature image: Screenshot of official trailer, 20th Century Studios YouTube