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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nDid you know that getting stranded on a deserted island has a way of shaking up social hierarchies? I suppose that was a big part of the plot for recent Best Picture Oscar nominee \u201cTriangle of Sadness.\u201d As well as the literary classic \u201cLord of the Flies.\u201d And it\u2019s represented on television in everything from \u201cSurvivor\u201d to \u201cLost\u201d to \u201cGilligan\u2019s Island.\u201d And it was at the center of a play I did in high school called \u201cThe Admirable Crichton,\u201d where I played a rich snob who gets taken down several pegs. Director Sam Raimi is hoping you\u2019ve somehow avoided all of these precursors, plus others I\u2019m sure I\u2019m forgetting, because only then can you find originality in \u201cSend Help.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rachel McAdams stars as Linda Liddle, a doormat of an employee in the strategy and planning department of a financial consulting firm. She does great work, but she doesn\u2019t have the best social skills, and her bro-y male colleagues take her work for granted while overlooking her as a person. This is especially true of her boss Bradley (Dylan O\u2019Brien), who gives a college buddy a promotion over her and is ready to boot her from the office over the smell of her tuna-fish sandwich. But he needs her numbers skills for a conference in Bangkok, so he reluctantly lets her tag along on his private plane. Wouldn\u2019t you know it, the plane goes down and only Linda and an injured Bradley make it to a nearby island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Linda is an adept survivalist, having read many books on the subject. She\u2019s able to build a makeshift shelter, get a fire going, and round up some food and water for the passed-out Bradley, all before he even wakes up. When he does come around, he\u2019s grateful for about ten seconds before chiding Linda for not making more of an effort to get the two of them rescued. She walks off, leaving him to the elements. He soon learns that he can\u2019t survive on his own and has to sheepishly ask her to go back to caring for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This establishes a pattern that continues for the rest of the movie: he\u2019ll think that the power he wields in the office also applies to the island, and she keeps easily proving him wrong. Eventually she becomes the powerful one, and she insists she\u2019s a better boss than he ever was, but\u2026 is she? Or is she destined to become the tyrant that Bradley was on the mainland? Could she even become something worse? It\u2019s hard to imagine Bradley, even at his most piggish, making some of the decisions Linda makes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking of piggishness, Raimi hopes that audiences are too distracted by select scenes of visual spectacle to notice that there\u2019s nothing original about the story. One is a battle between Linda and a supposedly-scary CGI boar. Others include the plane crash, a dream sequence, a physical altercation, and a high-tension confrontation involving a poisonous octopus and a dead rat. I\u2019d chide Raimi for relying too much on his old crutches of extreme violence and body horror, but it\u2019s not like he was doing better with the non-gruesome elements of the movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Basically, I spent the entirety of \u201cSend Help\u201d doing that \u201cmove it along\u201d gesture with my hand because the story was so routine. Bradley was never going to learn his lesson, Linda was only going to get worse, and rescue wouldn\u2019t come until much more blood (and possibly other innards) had been spilled. The film isn\u2019t devoid of properly-built suspense, but it\u2019s nothing that hasn\u2019t been seen in other, better cat-and-mouse horror movies (\u201cMisery,\u201d from the late Rob Reiner, came to mind). Sometimes people like to debate which movies they wish they could have with them on a deserted island. I wouldn\u2019t want \u201cSend Help\u201d even if I didn\u2019t have to waste a pick on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSend Help\u201d is rated R for strong\/bloody violence and language. Its running time is 113 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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