Send Help (2026) - A Movie Review

You call being stuck on a desert island horrible?

Send Help crashed-landed in theaters in 2026. Linda Liddle has been overlooked in the office for too long. After a plane crash, Linda and her malicious boss, Bradley Preston, are stranded on a desert island. The battle of office ranks continues as they fend for themselves and search for help.

Send Help is stuck on a desert island, all right. I knew what I was expecting when walking into the theater: a boss and employee getting stranded together and having to work out their differences. Send Help would have been more engrossing if it had chosen a cohesive story, instead of tossing in a humongous amount of filler.

Rachel McAdams (Linda Liddle) is the best part of Send Help. I was watching Mean Girls the night before I saw the film. Linda is an unappreciated woman who wants respect for the hard work she does. I like Linda’s growth. She gains new insights about survival and herself. Her character then dives between a newfound jungle woman and a psychotic.

To prepare for her role, McAdams went to survival boot camp and learned several skills, like opening a coconut by herself.

Dylan O’Brien plays the misogynistic boss, Bradley Preston. Bradley has no respect for Linda. He gets a lesson of a lifetime when Linda’s survival skills overpower him.

McAdams and O’Brien have a compelling dynamic. My favorite moment was when they were laughing about ‘bringing home the bacon.’ Throughout their island stay, Linda and Bradley bond, argue, compete against each other, argue more, and repeat. You can only drag this out for so long.

Iconic Evil Dead director Sam Raimi directs Send Help. I am a big horror fan, but the whole thriller angle took me out of the film. The script didn’t feel finished. Raimi seems torn between survival thriller, workplace satire, psychological drama, and dark comedy. The script felt unfinished, hoping between these storylines.

Raimi did a lot of research on filming locations and created authentic survivalist skills. Send Help was filmed in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The locations are stunning. Working on this island wasn’t as pleasant an experience, according to filmmakers.

The film helps viewers learn about survival. Survivalist expert Kylie Fureaux helped and gave advice. This is the only film to ever mention the reality game show, Survivor, one of my favorite shows. Some days it was so hot that filming scenes was physically exhausting. On a positive note, everyone had a good time working with Raimi.

On a technical level, the movie is often fun to watch. On a narrative level, it’s frustrating. A half hour needed to be trimmed from this almost two-hour film. Here’s the direction I thought the story would take. Linda discovers a new lifestyle and decides to stay. I didn’t feel much motivation for Bradley, other than to escape the island.

There’s more vomit than gore. The fight with the bore was awesome! Why couldn’t we have had more scenes like that? We seriously had more time to watch Linda continuously vomit in a disgusting CPR scene? I had to look away from the scene.

The climax reminded me of Red Eye, another thriller McAdams starred in. Similar to that film, the ending felt misplaced. There’s a stronger, tighter movie buried beneath the sand, one that leans fully into the boss-employee survival dynamic.

Send Help isn’t a bad film. Other audiences will have different opinions from mine, but the film should have had a different direction. It's another film to experience on the big screen.