Two of Director Sam Raimi’s favorite archetypes have historically been impossibly good rule follower, and obnoxiously handsome rake that needs to get his nose tweaked. These two have rarely met in Raimi’s filmography, a body of work that generally oscillates between Peter Parker in Spider-Man and Ash in Evil Dead. But this year we get to see him pit these two caricatures against one another in Send Help, a story of a put upon office worker being stranded on a deserted island with her selfish and rude nepobaby boss.

The film is centered on Linda, from Strategy and Planning (Rachel McAdams), a diligently smart spreadsheet witch with an above average work ethic and even more above average wits when it comes to contracts. She was promised a promotion before the former CEO of the company passed away, leaving it to his frat bro fail son Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) to laze around with his boys in. That’s not to say that Bradley is completely inept at business, just inept enough to overlook the skills that Linda is bringing to the table. He doesn’t see a need for a somewhat frumpy sweater wearing frizzy haired female in the C-Suite, regardless of how smart she is. He immediately reneges on the promise of his father, promoting one of his frat brothers to the position that is rightfully hers. She storms into his office and confronts him, which he is surprised by, and agrees to take her along on the business trip to attempt to change his mind.

In a turn of poetic justice a la Triangle of Sadness, the plane crashes leaving only Linda and Bradley alive. The plane crash itself is the first real hint of Raimi’s twisted cartoonish fixations behind the camera. An airplane filled with Looney Tunes would not have the absurdist feel that Raimi’s does. Business bros go flying around, their ties choking them in the wind as they flop around on the outside of the aircraft, they lose teeth, blood sprays out of their heads, they Wilhelm scream as they are sucked out of the cabin. This is a tease for the goop that will be all over this film, and much like Raimi, I love goop.

After the plane crash Linda, the massive Survivor fan that she is, knows exactly how to keep them going and quickly seizes the CEO spot of the island out from Bradley’s clutches. We see her build a shelter, collect rain water, tend to Bradley’s injuries, and hunt a truly demonic wild boar. Even besides the leg injury that Bradley sustained, he is outmatched by Linda in this environment. This is a world that relies on skills, rather than connections, to separate the winners from the losers.

As Linda seizes power we do see the ways in which power corrupts. She is at peace on the island, her skin is glowing, she seems more confident, settling into her role on the island drinking from a cup she made from bamboo and carved her monogram into. If the film had simply been an ironic twist on corporate politics, it would have been good, but the dissection of power and greed tilts it towards great. It’s also easy to superimpose Raimi onto Linda. Raimi is an incredibly corny Midwesterner who still to this day wears a suit to set every day when he is filming. A guy who was at the top of his game, coming off the largest most successful trilogy in box office history, and then one (fairly massive) bomb seemed to strip all that away from him. It feels like this is Raimi directing angry and Rachel McAdams brings that rage front and center, along with Linda’s corny yet charming demeanor.

It’s equally important to not sleep on Dylan O’Brien’s work here. He brings a sense of comedy to his character that could make Bruce Campbell jealous. There’s one laugh in particular, right before the plane crash, that is the most grating and hilarious sound in the world. You want nothing less than the worst things for this guy, and yet a couple acts later you do start to feel remorse for the situation he’s wound up in. O’Brien pulls you along this path with the work that he’s doing, assisted of course by his scene partner McAdams, and his director.

It’s just so delightful to have Sam Raimi back. It was a nine year sabbatical after the unmitigated fiasco that was Oz the Great and Powerful before Raimi came out of director jail with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The latter of which I did genuinely enjoy, even if it’s a lesser film that came out in a franchise that should have long since been laid to rest. But Send Help is such vintage Sam Raimi it feels like an old friend coming by for dinner, and the fact that he seems to be dropping by with some level of consistency gives me so much hope for all the goop, blood, slime, and vomit he can cram into every film he’s got.

4/5