If you can get past the sheer hilarity of casting Rachel McAdams as a “gross uggo,” your disbelief will be adequately suspended for the remainder of Send Help, a film that is one sizable miscalculation away from becoming a black-comedy classic. To be clear, McAdams is fantastic in this delicious role. She just won’t ever read on screen as an undatable outcast, even if she is asked to (gasp) slouch and wear dorky shoes, which are the only two observable attempts to disgustify her.

The plot actually hinges on the undesirability of her character, Linda Liddle, a truly exceptional fictional name for an employee of a “planning and strategy department.” Her new CEO/president, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), takes over for his deceased father and promptly passes Linda over for a promotion in favor of his former frat bro. Then a plane crash strands the pair on a remote island, and their dom/sub roles are reversed.

You see, Linda is a survival enthusiast and Survivor applicant. She has trained her brain on how to endure the wild while Bradley was engaging in some light sexual abuse. Without her help, he’ll die. Or at least, that is how things appear. As alluded to by the trailer, poster, and the involvement of director Sam Raimi, things take a turn for the gory and horror-adjacent.

All of that is good, sometimes even great. McAdams is always a friggin’ treasure. She’s so obviously having a blast here that it is likely to make viewers catch contact giddiness. O’Brien is not quite equal to McAdams, but he gets as close as any non-Rachel-McAdams can reasonably get. His line delivery on “Oh, you have a bird” enters it into the illustrious pantheon of “Minor Phrases From Comedies That I Will Repeat and No One Else Will Remember.”

And yet…

This will not venture into spoiler territory, despite a strong desire to do so. There was a moment a little over halfway in when I realized “Oh crap, this can’t end in any manner that will fully satisfy me.” It is the second worst thing you can think while watching a movie, right after “Wait, is that Jared Leto?” It is unclear whether writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift were hellbent on avoiding an explicit embrace of class warfare or if they just botched things. Their filmographies and bios suggest both scenarios are equally plausible.

Send Help didn’t need to be a “message movie” to be great. Quite the opposite, really. The film’s third act pivot actually takes some of the guilt-free fun away, introducing gross gender stereotypes and (hopefully unintended) misogyny in what appears to be an effort to be gleefully nihilistic. Raimi’s direction hammers the latter home, but the script unnecessarily pretzels what is still largely a super-fun, grotesque stranded island riff.

All of this is to say that I wish I could more full-throatedly scream my support for Send Help, which is still strongly recommended albeit with the aforementioned caveat. McAdams and O’Brien offer wickedly maniacal performances, Raimi cuts loose after being freed from the shackles of franchise filmmaking, and the whole thing washes up on the shores of “pretty darn good” after a scuttled voyage to the nation of True Classics.

Grade = B

Other Critical Voices to Consider

Meagan Navarro at Bloody Disgusting says “they don’t make thrillers like this very often these days. A relatively self-contained, original thriller showcasing two formidable performances guided by Sam Raimi’s deft hand as a director and splatstick entertainer. Send Help is full of vibrant personality, packed with all of Raimi’s signatures.”

Sherin Nicole at Riotus says “Send Help isan effective blood-soaked harpooning of office politics in a top dog versus underdog comedy-thriller. If that’s your thing, go in unspoiled. But don’t expect a razor-sharp character study; that’s not what this is. This is for those who want a twisty, aggressive, genre-blending survival nightmare with its eyebrow arched at gender and class dynamics.”

Maitland McDonagh says “If you enjoy Send Help then I highly recommend watching Lina Wertmuller’s 1974 Swept Away (not the 2002 remake starring Madonna). The power / class dynamics are reversed, with a rich bitch (Mariangela Melato) and a put-upon crew-member of her yacht (Giancarlo Giannini), but the general set-up and complications are similar, if filtered through very Italian sensibilities.”