SEND HELP

Name: SEND HELP
Item: SEND HELP
Author: Review

“Disrespectful Boss Mistreats the Wrong Employee”

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

A gory, chaotic ride that keeps you guessing, SEND HELP pits one of Hollywood’s current greats, Rachel McAdams, against breakout star Dylan O’Brien in director Sam Raimi’s return to his roots. The story revolves around Linda Little, a hard-working but awkward employee who finds herself stranded on a desert island with her horrible boss, Bradley Preston. Linda is more than up to the task of finding food, water and shelter. Bradley, meanwhile, still wants to be a boss. For those who are familiar with Raimi’s work, SEND HELP is exactly what you might expect. It’s witty, well-paced and overtly bloody.

SEND HELP has a strong Humanistic and Romantic worldview where characters have no regard for morals and only look out for themselves in a survival situation. The movie is chock-full of deception, mistreatment, and deceit, coming from and directed at both characters, culminating in a twisty ending that might dissatisfy some viewers. Due to the nature of the plot, the actions of the two main characters, the amount of violence, and foul language MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution for all viewers.

Content:

(HHH, Ro, Fe, E, LL, VVV, S, NN, A, MM) :

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

A strong Humanistic and Romantic worldview with very few redeeming qualities from either co-lead, the two try to get along in their situation and succeed in some ways but ultimately fail in others. Both characters hold mischievous, even malicious attitudes in a survival situation;

Foul Language:

20 obscenities including 11 uses of the “F” word, five uses of the “Sh” word, one use of the Lord’s name in vain, and a reference to male genitalia ;

Violence:

Widespread violence and gore, including copious amounts of blood, fighting, stabbings, killing of animals, perceived cutting off of body parts, actual cutting off of body parts, murder, eating bugs, extreme sunburn, brandishing of a gun and vomit;

Sex:

Brief kissing;

Nudity:

A man is entirely nude for a short period, strictly backside nudity;

Alcohol Use:

Characters get drunk off of homemade alcohol, mentioning of DUI (but nothing shown);

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

None; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Much of the movie revolves around misc. immortality, including deception, poisoning, stealing, breaking and entering and general mistreatment of others.

More Detail:

For those who are familiar with Raimi’s work, SEND HELP is exactly what you might expect. It’s witty, well-paced and overtly bloody. Made on a budget of 40 million, it appears most of that went into special effects and CGI. The graphics of this movie do not overshadow the performances of the co-leads, however. McAdams is phenomenal as Little, an awkward but formidable persona who, over time, proves just how in control she is of this situation.

Linda Little, a corporate strategist at a sizable company, has been promised a promotion by the company’s boss after many years of dedication. However, that boss unfortunately passes, leaving the business in the hands of his son, Bradley, who promptly gives the promotion to his old frat buddy. Furthermore, Bradley is very visibly disgusted by Linda’s awkwardness and just general appearance and secretly plans to transfer to a dead-end position – for good. However, an upset Linda protests Bradley’s decision, which impresses him enough to ask her to accompany him, his frat buddy, and other associates on an important trip to finalize a company merger.

Or so she thinks. Turns out, Bradley just invited her to do work none of the others wanted to do, and during this flight, he shows off an audition tape she made for the show SURVIVOR. Humiliated and quite a bit peeved, Linda deletes her work and resolves on the plane to never work for Bradley again. Then, the plane explodes.

After witnessing a few particularly gruesome deaths of all the side characters and a crash landing, Linda washes up on the shore of a deserted island. She comes to her senses before spotting Bradley nearby, also having survived but with a heavily injured leg. Begrudgingly, she saves his life and nurses him back to health – an act he is more frustrated with than thankful for.

Linda shows she is clearly capable of surviving the situation they’re in, quickly building shelters, gathering supplies, and finding consumable food. Bradley, meanwhile, can’t believe what’s happening and attempts to either take charge or do things on his own – multiple times. What follows is a back-and-forth game of cat-and-mouse in which Bradley needs Linda to survive but still very much hates her and attempts to outwit or outright betray her. Linda, meanwhile, has started to enjoy how much Bradley has to rely on her and decides to take advantage of it. Meanwhile, O’Brien deftly balances a character torn between trying (and failing) to assume leadership over Little and a man whose only means of survival is through her.

SEND HELP has a Humanistic and Romantic worldview where characters have no regard for morals and only look out for themselves in a survival situation. The movie is chock-full of deception, mistreatment, and deceit, coming from and directed at both characters, culminating in a twisty ending that might dissatisfy some viewers. Due to the nature of the plot, the actions of the two main characters, the amount of violence, and some harsh language, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution for all viewers.