Send Help centres around Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams – Are You There, God, It’s Me, Margaret.), the hardest-working person in her office, who was promised to be the next Vice President of the company by the former President.
Unfortunately, before she can negotiate like the awful Indeed promos – “But in terms of salary…”, he’s just died, and his idiot son, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien – Saturday Night), has taken over, applying some ’80s-style misogny with his “bros”, sharing college in-jokes, and taking the pee out of women in the office, including our nerdy heroine.
Given that it’s a Sam Raimi (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness IMAX 3D) film, I just wanted all of them to kick the bucket spectacularly. Did it happen?
The premise is such that following a work flight to Bangkok, the plane crashes and the only survivors on the desert island are Linda and Bradley, but as the film runs for 113 minutes, I was hoping for the slow-drip effect of her getting revenge.
Sadly, for McAdams’ character who’s a die-hard Survivor fan – the programme for which never made it to UK shores, although we have to suffer I’m A Celeb instead – while she has a couple of great scenes early on, which I’ll briefly highlight in the following spoiler-banner sentence…
…jeez, at least 2/3 of the two-hour runtime was FILLER! Sam Raimi could’ve cut this down to 40 mins and we’d all have an early dart, even adding a couple more decent moments and made it run 90 mins at most.
As a couple of asides, despite spending a long time in the jungle, how come Linda manages to wax her legs, and Bradley do the same for his upper arms?
Plus, I wondered if they’d bring in a “Wilson”-style character, a la Tom Hanks’ Cast Away, but nope.
Oh, and a 3D version has been created for this film, but apart from the two scenes mentioned in my spoiler header, above, I can’t think of anything that might look slightly interesting in that format. What an odd choice. Stick with 2D for this one, if you see it. But maybe catch it at home, so you can skip the boring parts.
Finally, while this was a ‘Scream Unseen‘ at Odeon, despite the clues pointing to this film (deciphered by better people than me, as I rarely get them), there were no walkouts, although while there are no post-credit scenes, all I will say is that there’s stuff in those credits that relate to what happens in the film, but most people just toddled off.
Send Help is in cinemas from this Friday, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 113 minutes
Release date: February 6th 2026
Studio: 20th Century Studios
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1 (ARRIRAW (4.6K), ProRes RAW (4K), Ultra Panavision 70))
Rating: 4/10
Director: Sam Raimi
Producers: Zainab Azizi, Sam Raimi
Screenplay: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift
Music: Danny Elfman
Cast:
Linda Liddle: Rachel McAdams
Bradley Preston: Dylan O’Brien
Zuri: Edyll Ismail
Franklin: Dennis Haysbert
Donovan: Xavier Samuel
Chase Peters: Chris Pang
Boat Captain: Thaneth Warakulnukroh
River: Emma Raimi
Polly Perera: Kristy Best
Barbara: Francesca Waters
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.