Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, has some thoughts on Sam Raimi’s latest horror flicks, Send Help, and why fans of Gilligan’s Island might object.
By MIKE FRIED
SEND HELP
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Linda Liddle is a meek and mild employee who works in Strategy and Planning. She is a total doormat, awkward around co-workers. She doesn’t have many friends. And her most engaging conversations are with her pet cockatoo. And she wants to be on the TV show Survivor most of all — she’s even studied for it!
Bradley Preston is the new president of the company, taking over from his deceased father. He’s an asshole and is giving Linda’s promised promotion to someone who has been at the company for 6 months (while Linda has been there for 7 years).
And because Linda’s not a people person.
And doesn’t golf.
But he’s willing to give Linda a chance by taking her on a business trip.
And the plane crashes (in one of the funniest plane crash sequences I have ever seen) and it’s just Linda and Bradley on a deserted island. And the dynamic between them changes.
Sam Raimi’s latest horror comedy is a wet dream for anyone who has hated their boss — which is practically everyone. (Except me, Paul!)
I honestly don’t know if this movie works without Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien. She is the perfect actress to play the dorky Linda who, even after the plane crash, is simply upbeat. And O’Brien is just terrific as the boss who thinks that this is just another day at work, ignoring the fact that he would have died without her. He often plays rage-filled characters and it works so well here. The chemistry between them is fantastic. And the change that overcomes Linda when she needs to fend for herself and for Bradley is just terrific. Covered in blood after killing a boar, she becomes a feral creature.
“We’re not in the office anymore, Bradley. No help is coming. This is the way things are now. Don’t ever mistake my kindness for weakness.”
The script by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, the screenwriters who teamed up to scribe Baywatch, Friday the 13th and Freddy v. Jason, have struck gold at the appropriate time, when most employees are dissatisfied with their jobs and even more dissatisfied with their bosses. They have taken the zeitgeist of a country and used it for purposes of evil, but really good.
And Raimi’s direction is absolutely insane — in the best of ways. This is a throwback to his early pictures where there is a sense of malevolence. but it’s tempered by totally bonkers insanity and humor. While I have enjoyed most of Raimi’s films, this is my favorite since Army of Darkness some 33 years ago. There is something about the way it just throws everything against the wall and most of it sticks. He is the King of Horror Mayhem Comedy and this film is no exception. And eventually Linda doesn’t want to leave the island and that’s really when the movie kicks into high gear under Raimi’s clever eye. And it wouldn’t be a Raimi film without a great jump scare.
Longtime Raimi collaborator and composer Danny Elfman provides punctuation to the action with an extremely riveting score.
When I found out that this movie was coming out in January, I didn’t have high hopes for it because of the January Dump Syndrome but, perhaps, just perhaps, there are so many movies being released that now good movies are coming out in January, too.
And of course what would a Sam Raimi movie be without Bruce Campbell? He is memorialized in a blink and you’ll miss him painting as Preston’s father, the former president of the company.
If I have any criticism, the final plot twist was a bit ludicrous. But ultimately it doesn’t matter because the film rebounds and the rest of the film is so good.
It’s Vintage Raimi.
WATCH IT!
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
