The master of unhinged dark comedy adds another to his collection.
Tales From the Crypt was originally a comic book series published by EC from 1950 to 1955. Part of EC’s larger crime and horror anthology comics that defined the 1950s, Tales From The Crypt stories followed a pretty familiar format: an individual is under the heel of either an individual or society. They eventually decide to fight back, but take things too far. They then have to try to survive the circumstances of their betrayal, but the ultimate dark element of human nature wins out. They typically, but not always, have an ending where the person who dares to fight back meets an unfortunate end.
Tales From the Crypt later would have a famous HBO adaptation, where Baby Boomer directors who remembered the comics from their youth would loosely adapt the material for a late 1980s-early 1990s aesthetic. There were even a few films associated with the brand. But they kept the core message of the original comics in tact: people hurt people, and eventually everyone snaps.
Which is why it is so striking that Sam Raimi’s new film, Send Help, seems to be cruising so closely to the Tales From the Crypt/EC formula. Raimi is no stranger to paying loving, if cartoonish, homage to his influences. He has traces of everything from cheesy 1950s creature features to Looney Tunes that tone his accomplished careers. He is amongst the most energizing filmmakers, precisely because he blends these elements together with both a true sense of sincerity but also a not-so-subtle nasty streak. Even his more conventional work always had a hint of the impish, mischievous quality under the surface.
But there is no “hint” of that in Send Help; it is all over every frame of the film. The gleeful gore of an Evil Dead, the cranked up absurdity of Crimewave or Drag Me to Hell, the melodramatic humanism of his Spider-Man trilogy or The Quick and the Dead. All is intermixed in Send Help, wrapped around a story about revenge, power structures, and who we are when all elements are stripped away. It is Raimi on full display, operating at the height of his ability, in service of a story that is both bleak in its outlook and titillating in its audacity.
Rachel McAdams stars as Linda Liddle, an awkward but hard working middle management number cruncher who is the sort of overlooked cog that allows corporate America to stay afloat. When the head of the company dies, she anticipates to finally get the promotion she was promised by the deceased CEO. But when the new CEO, nepobaby heir Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), takes over, he passes over Linda to promote one of his incompetent friends. As a means to placate her anger, Bradley invites Linda on an overseas work trip so that she can prove her worth to the company. Both of them know this is an empty promise.
Disaster strikes when a plane crash kills most everyone else on board, and strands both Linda and Bradley on a remote island. Thanks to injuries sustained in the crash, Bradley is at the mercy of Linda helping him. Luckily for him, Linda is a Survivor nut who had active desires to go on the show, so she is well-prepared to respond to the challenge of surviving these circumstances.
All of this is handled with efficiency in the film’s first 20 minutes or so, establishing the character dynamics between Linda and Bradley. The rest of the film unfolds as an unraveling of both, as the circumstances reveal Linda’s not so seething resentment towards her smug boss, and Bradley’s refusal to see Linda as more than a pawn in his corporate structure. Both are creatures fueled by rage and resentments, and the nasty fun of Send Help is as their relationship grows more and more tense, you find yourself second guessing who is precisely the worse of the two of them. Your sympathies automatically lie with Linda, but not unlike Anne Wilkes from Misery, her righteous anger eventually reveals truly unhinged personal behavior. She is equal parts impressive, embarrassing and unnerving, depending on the circumstances of the scene before her.
These potentially destabilizing mood swings are anchored by McAdams, who never allows Linda to fully get away from her, but instead gives them space to all exist within the same messy brain. McAdams also has some of the most astonishing face acting throughout this film, communicating both deeply felt hurt and manic malice in a matter of seconds. Linda isn’t quite in the category of the truly great characters, but McAdams gives her depth and layers that she desperately needs.
Dylan O’Brien, playing opposite her, has a different role to play: to play a dick who you nominally will be upset to see put in true peril. He definitely nails the former part, and mostly succeeds in the latter, but never quite nails the other. This is partially a function of the script, who gives Bradley stakes, but also undermines in certain key ways that make those seem potentially shallow. For example, Bradley is shown to miss his fiance, but also is suggested to not be the most faithful partner.
What’s undeniable is the chemistry between McAdams and O’Brien, which is good because most of the film rests on their shoulders. As Linda and Bradley’s relationships takes different shapes throughout the film, their actors nail the small interpersonal interactions. You truly believe that there is something that Linda finds both attractive and infuriating about Bradley. You believe the disdain and terror that Bradley feels towards Linda.
Send Help isn’t a deeply profound film. But what it does achieve is being nasty, brutally funny, and occasionally tense, not unlike those old Tales From the Crypt comics. The few attempts the film stabs for big surprises mostly play as foregone conclusions if you’re paying attention, and the ending for the film can feel a bit abrupt. But the combination of Raimi’s lil’ stinker bag of tricks and two lead performances that really crackle together overcomes what can at times feel rote. The end result is a gleeful, sub-two hour portrait of people at their meanest and most desperate. Which is a lot more fun than the description would suggest.
