Editor’s Note: Freeline Media movie critic Mike Fried has been checking out new movies on Hulu lately, and he’s got a review of the dark comedy/horror movie Send Help. Read on!

By MIKE FRIED

Send Help  2026

4/5

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.

Plus, she wants to be on the TV show Survivor most of all — she’s even studied for it!  Even her name demonstrates the esteem in which she is held by her fellow colleagues.

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 to Bangkok.  

But then 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!).  Triangle of Sadness comparisons would not be improper since both films are about the haves and have-nots and how they survive under dire circumstances.

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 this is just another day of work, ignoring the fact that he would have died without her. He often plays rage-filled characters and it works so well here, because he gets to be a total dick, but he also gets to lean into the comedy quite well, something he is not often given a chance to do. When Linda speaks to him in a tone of voice he does not like, he says “You work for me — what did you say?” 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.” Let me just say that blood-soaked Rachel McAdams is the girl of my dreams. 

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, a time in which 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 as Linda torments Bradley and takes control, she reminds him “Although I’m betting I am a much nicer boss than you ever would have been.”

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 which is 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. For the first time in her life on the island, Linda feels valuable and she doesn’t want to be rescued. 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 being released in January. Now that I’ve rewatched it on Hulu, it just reaffirmed my love for it.

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.